verness.

That was well, and the King was glad to hear it. He had thirty eggs;
they were fresh and good, but it would take a clever person to hatch
chickens out of them. He then bade his chancellor get the eggs and
give them to the man.

"Take these home to your daughter," said the King, "and bid her hatch
them out for me. If she succeeds she shall have a bag of money for her
pains, but if she fails you shall be beaten as a vain boaster."

The man was troubled when he heard this. Still his daughter was so
clever he was almost sure she could hatch out the eggs. He carried
them home to her and told her exactly what the King had said, and it
did not take the girl long to find out that the eggs had been boiled.

When she told her father that, he made a great to-do. That was a
pretty trick for the King to have played upon him. Now he would have
to take a beating and all the neighbors would hear about it. Would to
Heaven he had never had a daughter at all if that was what came of it.

The girl, however, bade him be of good cheer. "Go to bed and sleep
quietly," said she. "I will think of some way out of the trouble. No
harm shall come to you, even though I have to go to the palace myself
and take the beating in your place."

The next day the girl gave her father a bag of boiled beans and bade
him take them out to a certain place where the King rode by every day.
"Wait until you see him coming," said she, "and then begin to sow the
beans." At the same time he was to call out this, that, and the other
so loudly that the King could not help but hear him.

The man took the bag of beans and went out to the field his daughter
had spoken of. He waited until he saw the King coming, and then he
began to sow the beans, and at the same time to cry aloud, "Come sun,
come rain! Heaven grant that these boiled beans may yield me a good
crop."

The King was surprised that any one should be so stupid as to think
boiled beans would grow and yield a crop. He did not recognize the
man, for he had only seen him once, and he stopped his horse to speak
to him. "My poor man," said he, "how can you expect boiled beans to
grow? Do you not know that that is impossible?"

"Whatever the King commands should be possible," answered the man,
"and if chickens can hatch from boiled eggs why should not boiled
beans yield a crop?"

When the King heard this he looked at the man more closely, and then
he recognized him as the father of the clever daugh