beg your pardon, miss, but I have express orders to admit no child
whatever within the palace gates. They tell me his majesty the king
says he is sick of children."

"He may well be sick of me!" thought the princess; "but it can't mean
that he does not want me home again.--I don't think you can very well
call me a child," she said, looking the sentry full in the face.

"You ain't very big, miss," answered the soldier, "but so be you say
you ain't a child, I'll take the risk. The king can only kill me, and a
man must die once."

He opened the gate, stepped aside, and allowed her to pass. Had she
lost her temper, as every one but the wise woman would have expected of
her, he certainly would not have done so.

She ran into the palace, the door of which had been left open by the
porter when he followed the soldiers and prisoners to the throne-room,
and bounded up the stairs to look for her father and mother. As she
passed the door of the throne-room she heard an unusual noise in it,
and running to the king's private entrance, over which hung a heavy
curtain, she peeped past the edge of it, and saw, to her amazement, the
shepherd and shepherdess standing like culprits before the king and
queen, and the same moment heard the king say--

"Peasants, where is the princess Rosamond?"

"Truly, sire, we do not know," answered the shepherd.

"You ought to know," said the king.

"Sire, we could keep her no longer."

"You confess, then," said the king, suppressing the outbreak of the
wrath that boiled up in him, "that you turned her out of your house."

For the king had been informed by a swift messenger of all that had
passed long before the arrival of the prisoners.

"We did, sire; but not only could we keep her no longer, but we knew
not that she was the princess."

"You ought to have known, the moment you cast your eyes upon her," said
the king. "Any one who does not know a princess the moment he sees her,
ought to have his eyes put out."

"Indeed he ought," said the queen.

To this they returned no answer, for they had none ready.

"Why did you not bring her at once to the palace," pursued the king,
"whether you knew her to be a princess or not? My proclamation left
nothing to your judgment. It said EVERY CHILD."

"We heard nothing of the proclamation, sire."

"You ought to have heard," said the king. "It is enough that I make
proclamations; it is for you to read them. Are they not written in
letters of gold