where an old woman was sitting spinning
with a distaff, and she called to him:

'Come hither, come hither, my handsome son, and let me comb your hair.'

The youth liked the thought of this, let the foals run where they chose,
and seated himself in the cleft of the rock by the side of the old hag.
So there he sat with his head on her lap, taking his ease the livelong
day.

The foals came back in the evening, and then he too got a bit of moss
and a bottle of water from the old hag, which things he was to show to
the King. But when the King asked the youth: 'Canst thou tell me what my
seven foals eat and drink?' and the youth showed him the bit of moss and
the bottle of water, and said: 'Yes here may you behold their meat, and
here their drink,' the King once more became wroth, and commanded that
three red stripes should be cut on the lad's back, that salt should be
strewn upon them, and that he should then be instantly chased back to
his own home. So when the youth got home again he too related all that
had happened to him, and he too said that he had gone out in search of a
place once, but that never would he do it again.

On the third day Cinderlad wanted to set out. He had a fancy to try to
watch the seven foals himself, he said.

The two others laughed at him, and mocked him. 'What I when all went so
ill with us, do you suppose that you are going to succeed? You look like
succeeding--you who have never done anything else but lie and poke about
among the ashes!' said they.

'Yes, I will go too,' said Cinderlad, 'for I have taken it into my
head.'

The two brothers laughed at him, and his father and mother begged him
not to go, but all to no purpose, and Cinderlad set out on his way. So
when he had walked the whole day, he too came to the King's palace as
darkness began to fall.

There stood the King outside on the steps, and he asked whither he was
bound.

'I am walking about in search of a place,' said Cinderlad.

'From whence do you come, then?' inquired the King, for by this time he
wanted to know a little more about the men before he took any of them
into his service.

So Cinderlad told him whence he came, and that he was brother to the two
who had watched the seven foals for the King, and then he inquired if he
might be allowed to try to watch them on the following day.

'Oh, shame on them!' said the King, for it enraged him even to think of
them. 'If thou art brother to those two, thou too art not