"But when my love did become too strong for my vow, and opened my lips
at last," said the King, "why did you run away?"

Viola said, "Had you not run away the week before? And now I have
answered all your questions."

"No," said the King, "not all. You haven't told me yet when you first
loved me."

Viola smiled and said, "I first stole barley sugar when my father said
This is for the other little girl over the way'; and I first loved you
when, seeing you had been too absent-minded to know that Pepper had
cast her shoes, I feared you were in love."

"But that was three minutes after we met!" cried the King.

"Was it as much as that!" said she.

Now after awhile Viola said, "Let us get down to the world again. We
cannot stay here for ever."

"Why not?" said the King. However, they walked to the brow of the hill,
and stood together gazing awhile over the sunlit earth that had never
been so beautiful to either of them; for their sight was newly-washed
with love, and all things were changed.

"Now I know how she looks from heaven," said the King, "and that is
like heaven itself. Let us go; for I think she will still look so at
our coming, seeing that we carry heaven with us."

So they went downhill to the forge, and there Viola said to her lover,
"I can stay no longer in this place where all men have known me as a
lad; and besides, a woman's home is where her husband lives."

"But I live only in a Barn," said William the King.

"Then I will live there with you," said Viola, "and from this very
night. But first I will shoe Pepper anew, for she is so unequally shod
that she might spill us on the road. And that she may be shod worthily
of herself and of us, give me what you have tied up in your blue
handkerchief." The King fetched his handkerchief and unknotted it, and
gave her his crown and scepter; and she set him at the bellows and made
three golden shoes and shod the nag on her two fore-feet and her off
hind-foot. But when she looked at the near hind-foot, which the King
had shod last of all, she said: "I could not make a better. And
therefore, like his father, the Lad must shut his smithy, for he is
dead." Then she put the three shoes she had removed into a bag with
some other trifles; and while she did so the King took what remained of
the gold and made it into two rings. This done, they got on to Pepper's
back, and with her three shoes of gold and one of iron she bore them
the way the King had come. Whe