come
down to the city, that the king might see him of whom there was such
great report.

Then the king got up and went away, and the queen began to doubt; and
the more she thought the more she feared she had not been acting wisely
in talking as she did, for it is not wise to praise anyone to a king.
She went away to her own room to consider, and to try if she could hear
of any reason why the king should act as he had done, and desire her
brother to come to him to the city; and she found out that it was all a
plot of her enemies. Herself they had failed to injure, so they were now
plotting against her through her brother. They had gone to the king, and
filled his ear with slanderous reports. They had said that the queen's
brother was the strongest man in all the kingdom. 'He was cunning, too,'
they said, 'and very popular among all the people; and he was so puffed
up with pride, now that his sister was a queen, that there was nothing
he did not think he could do.' They represented to the king how
dangerous such a man was in a kingdom, that it would be quite easy for
him to raise such rebellion as the king could hardly put down, and that
he was just the man to do such a thing. Nay, it was indeed proved that
he must be disloyally plotting something, or he would have come down
with his sister to the city when she came. But now many months had
passed, and he never came. Clearly he was not to be trusted. Any other
man whose sister was a queen would have come and lived in the palace,
and served the king and become a minister, instead of staying up there
and pretending to be a blacksmith.

The king's mind had been much disturbed by this, for it seemed to him
that it must be in part true; and he went to the queen, as I have said,
and his suspicions had not been lulled by what she told him, so he had
ordered her to write to her brother to come down to the palace.

The queen was terrified when she saw what a mistake she had made, and
how she had fallen into the trap of her enemies; but she hoped that the
king would forget, and she determined that she would send no order to
her brother to come. But the next day the king came back to the subject,
and asked her if she had yet sent the letter, and she said 'No!' The
king was very angry at this disobedience to his orders, and he asked her
how it came that she had not done as he had commanded, and sent a
letter to her brother to call him to the palace.

Then the queen fell at the k