rand-new good conscience that he quite left off going to see her.
So in a little while the queen, with her suspicions and her magic
crystal, had nosed out the young king's hiding-place.

The fox said to the king's son: 'The queen's eye is on you! Get out
and run for your life, for if you stay here till to-morrow, you will
wake up and find yourself a dead goose!'

'But where else can I go to?' asked the king's son. 'Is there any
place left for me?' The fox laughed, and winked, and whispered a word;
and all at once the king's son got up and went.

The queen had said to her messengers, 'Go and look in the fox's hole;
and you shall find him!' But the messengers came and dug up the
burrow, and found butter and eggs from the royal dairy, but of the
king's son never a sign.

The king's son came to the palace, and as he crept through the gardens
he found there his little brother alone at play,--playing sadly
because now he was all alone. Then the king's son stopped and said,
'Little brother, do you so much wish to be king?' And taking off the
crown, he put it upon his brother's head. Then he went on through
underground ways and corridors, till he came to the palace dungeons.

Now a dungeon is a hard thing to get out of, but it is easy enough to
get into. He came to the deepest and darkest dungeon of all, and there
he opened the door, and went in and hid himself.

The queen's son came running to his mother, wearing the king's crown.
'Oh, mother,' he said, 'I am frightened! while I was playing, my
brother came looking all dead and white, and put this crown on my
head. Take it off for me, it hurts!'

When the queen saw the crown on her son's head, she was horribly
afraid; for that it should have so come there was the most unlikely
thing of all. She fetched her crystal ball, and looked in, asking
where the king's son might be, and, for answer, the crystal became
black as night.

Then said the queen to herself, 'He is dead at last!'

But, now that the king's crown was on the wrong head, the air, and the
water, and the dry land, over which God is lord, heard of it. And the
trees said, 'Until the king's son returns, we will not put forth bud
or leaf!'

And the birds said, 'We will not sing in the land, or breed or build
nests until the king's son returns!'

And the fishes said, 'We will not stay in the ponds or rivers to get
caught, unless the king's son, to whom we belong, returns!'

And the foxes said, 'Unless the kin