suaded the famous physician to undertake the journey to his own
court.

On his arrival the doctor was led at once into the king's presence, and
made a careful examination of his foot.

'Alas! your majesty,' he said, when he had finished, 'the wound is
beyond the power of man to heal; but though I cannot cure it, I can
at least deaden the pain, and enable you to walk without so much
suffering.'

'Oh, if you can only do that,' cried the king, 'I shall be grateful to
you for life! Give your own orders; they shall be obeyed.'

'Then let your majesty bid the royal shoemaker make you a shoe of
goat-skin very loose and comfortable, while I prepare a varnish to paint
over it of which I alone have the secret!' So saying, the doctor bowed
himself out, leaving the king more cheerful and hopeful than he had been
for long.

The days passed very slowly with him during the making of the shoe and
the preparation of the varnish, but on the eighth morning the physician
appeared, bringing with him the shoe in a case. He drew it out to slip
on the king's foot, and over the goat-skin he had rubbed a polish so
white that the snow itself was not more dazzling.

'While you wear this shoe you will not feel the slightest pain,' said
the doctor. 'For the balsam with which I have rubbed it inside and out
has, besides its healing balm, the quality of strengthening the material
it touches, so that, even were your majesty to live a thousand years,
you would find the slipper just as fresh at the end of that time as it
is now.'

The king was so eager to put it on that he hardly gave the physician
time to finish. He snatched it from the case and thrust his foot into
it, nearly weeping for joy when he found he could walk and run as easily
as any beggar boy.

'What can I give you?' he cried, holding out both hands to the man who
had worked this wonder. 'Stay with me, and I will heap on you riches
greater than ever you dreamed of.' But the doctor said he would accept
nothing more than had been agreed on, and must return at once to his own
country, where many sick people were awaiting him. So king Balancin had
to content himself with ordering the physician to be treated with royal
honours, and desiring that an escort should attend him on his journey
home.

For two years everything went smoothly at court, and to king Balancin
and his daughter the sun no sooner rose than it seemed time for it to
set. Now, the king's birthday fell in the month of J