window over the gate, and saw the sentinels on
duty.

"Hi!" he called.

And the sentinels turned round, looked up, and saluted.

"Have you seen anyone go out?" he cried.

"No one, sire," answered the soldiers.

The king, who began to guess what had happened, hurried back to the
turret-room.

There were all the tradesmen with parcels under their arms.

"What means this, gentlemen?" said his Majesty, severely. "For what
reason did you leave the room without my permission?"

They all knelt down, humbly imploring his compassion.

"Get up, you donkeys!" said the king, forgetting his politeness. "Get
up, and tell me where you have been hiding yourselves."

The hatter came forward, and said:

"Sire, you will not believe me; indeed, I can scarcely believe it
myself!"

"Nor none of us can't," said the swordmaker. "We have been home, and
brought the articles. All orders executed with punctuality and
dispatch," he added, quoting his own advertisement without thinking of
it.

On this the swordmaker took out and exhibited the Andrea Ferrara blade,
which was exactly like the Sword of Sharpness.

The upholsterer undid his parcel, and there was a Persian rug, which no
one could tell from the magical carpet.

The hatter was fumbling with the string of his parcel, when he suddenly
remembered, what the king in his astonishment had not noticed, that he
had a cap on himself. He pulled it off in a hurry, and the king at once
saw that it was his Wishing Cap, and understood all about the affair. The
hatter, in his absence, had tried on the Wishing Cap, and had wished that
he himself and his friends were all at home and back again with their
wares at the palace. And what he wished happened, of course, as was
natural. In a moment the king saw how much talk this business would
produce in the country, and he decided on the best way to stop it.

Seizing the Wishing Cap, he put it on, wished all the tradesmen,
including the shoemaker, back in the town at their shops, and also wished
that none of them should remember anything about the whole affair.

In a moment he was alone in the turret-room. As for the shopkeepers,
they had a kind of idea that they had dreamed something odd; but, as it
went no further, of course they did not talk about it, and nobody was any
the wiser.

"Owl that I am!" said King Prigio to himself. "I might have better
wished for a complete set of sham fairy things which would not work. It
would