o the brook, ate, drank, and fell sound
asleep, so that the watchers easily bound him, and carried him off to
the palace. In a moment the king had him fast in the golden cage, and
showed him, with ferocious joy, to the strangers who were visiting his
court. The poor captive, when he awoke from his drunken sleep, tried
to talk to them, but no one would listen to him, so he shut himself up
altogether, and the people who came to stare took him for a dumb man of
the woods. He wept and moaned to himself all day, and would hardly touch
food, though, in dread that he should die and escape his tormentors, the
king ordered his head cook to send him dishes from the royal table.

The gold-bearded man had been in captivity about a month, when the king
was forced to make war upon a neighbouring country, and left the palace,
to take command of his army. But before he went he called his stepson to
him and said:

'Listen, boy, to what I tell you. While I am away I trust the care of my
prisoner to you. See that he has plenty to eat and drink, but be careful
that he does not escape, or even walk about the room. If I return and
find him gone, you will pay for it by a terrible death.'

The young prince was thankful that his stepfather was going to the war,
and secretly hoped he might never come back. Directly he had ridden
off the boy went to the room where the cage was kept, and never left it
night and day. He even played his games beside it.

One day he was shooting at a mark with a silver bow; one of his arrows
fell into the golden cage.

'Please give me my arrow,' said the prince, running up to him; but the
gold-bearded man answered:

'No, I shall not give it to you unless you let me out of my cage.'

'I may not let you out,' replied the boy, 'for if I do my stepfather
says that I shall have to die a horrible death when he returns from the
war. My arrow can be of no use to you, so give it to me.'

The man handed the arrow through the bars, but when he had done so he
begged harder than ever that the prince would open the door and set
him free. Indeed, he prayed so earnestly that the prince's heart was
touched, for he was a tender-hearted boy who pitied the sorrows of other
people. So he shot back the bolt, and the gold-bearded man stepped out
into the world.

'I will repay you a thousand fold for that good deed.' said the man, and
then he vanished. The prince began to think what he should say to the
king when he came back; the