I am dead, lay me in a plain
wooden chest, and set it in the church, and for a whole year place a
sentinel beside it every night.'

The king was frightened indeed, and thought she was raving, but in order
to please her, he said, 'Well, of these three things I shall choose the
last; if you die, I shall lay you at once in a plain wooden chest, and
have it set in the church, and every night I shall place a sentinel
beside it. But you shall not die, even if you are ill now.'

He immediately summoned all the best doctors in the country, and they
came with all their prescriptions and their medicine bottles, but next
day the princess was stiff and cold in death. All the doctors could
certify to that and they all put their names to this and appended their
seals, and then they had done all they could.

The king kept his promise. The princess's body was lain the same day in
a plain wooden chest, and set in the chapel of the castle, and on that
night and every night after it, a sentinel was posted in the church, to
keep watch over the chest.

The first morning when they came to let the sentinel out, there was no
sentinel there. They thought he had just got frightened and run away,
and next evening a new one was posted in the church. In the morning he
was also gone. So it went every night. When they came in the morning to
let the sentinel out, there was no one there, and it was impossible to
discover which way he had gone if he had run away. And what should they
run away for, every one of them, so that nothing more was over heard
or seen of them, from the hour that they were set on guard beside the
princess's chest?

It became now a general belief that the princess's ghost walked, and ate
up all those who were to guard her chest, and very soon there was no one
left who would be placed on this duty, and the king's soldiers deserted
the service, before their turn came to be her bodyguard. The king then
promised a large reward to the soldier who would volunteer for the post.
This did for some time, as there were found a few reckless fellows,
who wished to earn this good payment. But they never got it, for in the
morning, they too had disappeared like the rest.

So it had gone on for something like a whole year; every night a
sentinel had been placed beside the chest, either by compulsion or of
his own free will, but not a single one of the sentinels was to be seen,
either on the following day or any time thereafter. And so it h