full of sorrow, and
went down to the byre to the Bull. He too was standing there hanging his
head, and looking so downcast that she fell a-weeping over him.

'What are you weeping for?' said the Bull.

So she told him that the King had come home again, and that the Queen
had pretended to be ill, and that she had made the doctor say that she
could never be well again unless some of the flesh of the Blue Bull was
given her to eat, and that now he was to be killed.

'When once they have taken my life they will soon kill you also,'
said the Bull. 'If you are of the same mind with me, we will take our
departure this very night.'

The King's daughter thought that it was bad to go and leave her father,
but that it was worse still to be in the same house with the Queen, so
she promised the Bull that she would come.

At night, when all the others had gone to bed, the King's daughter stole
softly down to the byre to the Bull, and he took her on his back and
got out of the courtyard as quickly as he could. So at cock-crow next
morning, when the people came to kill the Bull, he was gone, and when
the King got up and asked for his daughter she was gone too. He sent
forth messengers to all parts of the kingdom to search for them, and
published his loss in all the parish churches, but there was no one who
had seen anything of them.

In the meantime the Bull travelled through many lands with the King's
daughter on his back, and one day they came to a great copper-wood,
where the trees, and the branches, and the leaves, and the flowers, and
everything else was of copper.

But before they entered the wood the Bull said to the King's daughter:

'When we enter into this wood, you must take the greatest care not to
touch a leaf of it, or all will be over both with me and with you, for a
Troll with three heads, who is the owner of the wood, lives here.'

So she said she would be on her guard, and not touch anything. And she
was very careful, and bent herself out of the way of the branches, and
put them aside with her hands; but it was so thickly wooded that it was
all but impossible to get forward, and do what she might, she somehow or
other tore off a leaf which got into her hand.

'Oh! oh! What have you done now?' said the Bull. 'It will now cost us a
battle for life or death; but do be careful to keep the leaf.'

Very soon afterwards they came to the end of the wood, and the Troll
with three heads came rushing up to them.