her was pleased when he heard this. Six dollars a week was fair
pay, and it would be a fine thing if the lad could win the Princess
for his wife. At any rate it was worth trying for.

So the eldest son cocked his hat over one ear, and off he set for the
palace.

He had not gone so very far when he came to the edge of a forest, and
there was an old crone with a green nose a yard long, and it was
caught in a crack of a log. She was dancing and hopping about, but for
all her dancing and hopping she got no farther than that one spot, for
her nose held her there.

The lad stopped and stared at her, and she looked so funny to his mind
that he laughed and laughed till his sides ached.

"You gawk!" screamed the old hag. "Come and drive a wedge in the crack
so I can get my nose out. Here I have stood for twice a hundred years,
and no Christian soul has come to set me free."

"If you have stood there twice a hundred years you might as well stay
a while longer. As for me, I'm expected at the King's palace, and I
have no time to waste driving wedges," said the lad, and away he went,
one foot before the other, leaving the old crone with her nose still
in the crack.

When the lad came to the palace, he knocked at the door and told the
man who opened it that he had come to see about the place of herdsman.
When the man heard this he brought the lad straight to the King, and
told him what the lad had come for.

The King listened and nodded his head. Yes, he was in need of a
herdsman and would be glad to take the lad into his service, and the
wages were just as the youth thought, with a chance of winning the
Princess to boot. But there was one part of the bargain that had been
left out. If the lad failed to keep the herd together and lost so much
as even one small leveret, he was to receive such a beating as would
turn him black and blue.

That part of the bargain was not such pleasant hearing as the rest of
it. Still the lad had a mind to try for the Princess. So he was taken
out to the paddock where the hares were, and a pretty sight it was to
see them hopping and frisking about, hundreds and hundreds of them,
big and little.

All morning the hares were kept there in the paddock with the new
herdsman watching them, and as long as that was the case everything
went well. But later on the hares had to be driven out on the hills
for a run and a bite of fresh grass, and then the trouble began. The
lad could no more keep them tog