as he stood, soldiers came and laid hands on him, and led him up
to the cask, where a big fire was blazing, and the horrid black pitch
boiling and bubbling over the sides. He looked and shuddered, but there
was no escape; so he shut his eyes to avoid seeing.

The word was given for him to mount the steps which led to the top of
the cask, when, suddenly, some men were seen running with all their
might, crying as they went that a large ship with its sails spread was
making straight for the city. No one knew what the ship was, or whence
it came; but the king declared that he would not have the boy burned
before its arrival, there would always be time enough for that.

At length the vessel was safe in port, and a whisper went through the
watching crowd that on board was the Sister of the Sun, who had come to
marry the young peasant as she had promised. In a few moments more she
had landed, and desired to be shown the way to the cottage which her
bridegroom had so often described to her; and whither he had been led
back by the king's order at the first sign of the ship.

'Don't you know me?' asked the Sister of the Sun, bending over him where
he lay, almost driven out of his senses with terror.

'No, no; I don't know you,' answered the youth, without raising his
eyes.

'Kiss me,' said the Sister of the Sun; and the youth obeyed her, but
still without looking up.

'Don't you know me NOW?' asked she.

'No, I don't know you--I don't know you,' he replied, with the manner of
a man whom fear had driven mad.

At this the Sister of the Sun grew rather frightened, and beginning at
the beginning, she told him the story of his meeting with her, and
how she had come a long way in order to marry him. And just as she had
finished in walked the king, to see if what the boy had said was really
true. But hardly had he opened the door of the cottage when he was
almost blinded by the light that filled it; and he remembered what
he had been told about the star on the forehead of the princess. He
staggered back as if he had been struck, then a curious feeling took
hold of him, which he had never felt before, and falling on his knees
before the Sister of the Sun, he implored her to give up all thought of
the peasant boy, and to share his throne. But she laughed, and said she
had a finer throne of her own, if she wanted to sit on it, and that she
was free to please herself, and would have no husband but the boy whom
she would never have