be what I
saw."

"I will try to remember," said the princess, holding her cloak, and
looking up in her face.

"Go, then," said the wise woman.

Rosamond turned away on the instant, ran to the picture, stepped over
the frame of it, heard a door close gently, gave one glance back, saw
behind her the loveliest palace-front of alabaster, gleaming in the
pale-yellow light of an early summer-morning, looked again to the
eastward, saw the faint outline of her father's city against the sky,
and ran off to reach it.

It looked much further off now than when it seemed a picture, but the
sun was not yet up, and she had the whole of a summer day before her.

XIV.

The soldiers sent out by the king, had no great difficulty in finding
Agnes's father and mother, of whom they demanded if they knew any thing
of such a young princess as they described. The honest pair told them
the truth in every point--that, having lost their own child and found
another, they had taken her home, and treated her as their own; that
she had indeed called herself a princess, but they had not believed
her, because she did not look like one; that, even if they had, they
did not know how they could have done differently, seeing they were
poor people, who could not afford to keep any idle person about the
place; that they had done their best to teach her good ways, and had
not parted with her until her bad temper rendered it impossible to put
up with her any longer; that, as to the king's proclamation, they heard
little of the world's news on their lonely hill, and it had never
reached them; that if it had, they did not know how either of them
could have gone such a distance from home, and left their sheep or
their cottage, one or the other, uncared for.

"You must learn, then, how both of you can go, and your sheep must take
care of your cottage," said the lawyer, and commanded the soldiers to
bind them hand and foot.

Heedless of their entreaties to be spared such an indignity, the
soldiers obeyed, bore them to a cart, and set out for the king's
palace, leaving the cottage door open, the fire burning, the pot of
potatoes boiling upon it, the sheep scattered over the hill, and the
dogs not knowing what to do.

Hardly were they gone, however, before the wise woman walked up, with
Prince behind her, peeped into the cottage, locked the door, put the
key in her pocket, and then walked away up the hill. In a few minutes
there arose a great batt