said the magician, "that will be easy enough to prove; tell me
how you would have me do so and I will do it."

"Very well," said the princess, "then let me see you change yourself
into a lion. If you can do that I may perhaps believe you to be as great
as my husband."

"It shall," said the magician, "be as you say. He began to mutter spells
and strange words, and then all of a sudden he was gone, and in his
place there stood a lion with bristling mane and flaming eyes--a sight
fit of itself to kill a body with terror.

"That will do!" cried the princess, quaking and trembling at the sight,
and thereupon the magician took his own shape again.

"Now," said he, "do you believe that I am as great as the poor soldier?"

"Not yet," said the princess; "I have seen how big you can make
yourself, now I wish to see how little you can become. Let me see you
change yourself into a mouse."

"So be it," said the magician, and began again to mutter his spells.
Then all of a sudden he was gone just as he was gone before, and in his
place was a little mouse sitting up and looking at the princess with a
pair of eyes like glass beads.

But he did not sit there long. This was what the soldier had planned
for, and all the while he had been standing by with his feather hat upon
his head. Up he raised his foot, and down he set it upon the mouse.

Crunch!--that was an end of the magician.

After that all was clear sailing; the soldier hunted up the three-legged
stool and down he sat upon it, and by dint of no more than just a little
wishing, back flew palace and garden and all through the air again to
the place whence it came.

I do not know whether the old king ever believed again that his
son-in-law was the King of the Wind; anyhow, all was peace and
friendliness thereafter, for when a body can sit upon a three-legged
stool and wish to such good purpose as the soldier wished, a body is
just as good as a king, and a good deal better, to my mind.

The Soldier who cheated the Devil looked into his pipe; it was nearly
out. He puffed and puffed and the coal glowed brighter, and fresh clouds
of smoke rolled up into the air. Little Brown Betty came and refilled,
from a crock of brown foaming ale, the mug which he had emptied. The
Soldier who had cheated the Devil looked up at her and winked one eye.

"Now," said St. George, "it is the turn of yonder old man," and he
pointed, as he spoke, with the stem of his pipe towards old Bidpai, wh