sir,
step before me to the hair-dresser. I'll have those locks of yours shorn
so that you'll look less like a girl and more like a grenadier."

Fritz, keeping back the tears in mingled shame and terror, walked to
the door and paced down the hall before his father. He tried to hold
himself straight like a soldier, but it was hard when he felt as though
he were being marched to execution.

The King handed the boy over to the hair-dresser, and in fifteen minutes
the curls were all gone and Fritz's hair was close-cropped like a man's.
As soon as he was free he ran to his mother's room, and there the gentle
Queen, Sophia Dorothea, took him in her arms and comforted him. She knew
how sensitive her little son was, how absolutely different from his
father, and she could sympathize with both the children's suffering
under the King's cruelty.

For once the mother dared to disobey her husband. The next week she told
the two children to go to a distant part of the palace grounds where
there was a deep wood, and see what they should find there. They obeyed,
and ran eagerly down the path to the forest where they had often played
under the trees and in the caves in the rocks. They came to a little
greenwood circle completely hidden from the roads and there found their
music-master. He led them to a cave, and showed them Wilhelmina's little
spinnet, and Fritz's flute lying on it. That was their mother's
surprise. She had arranged that the children's music teacher should meet
them out there and give them the lessons they wanted. Boy and girl were
happy again; they took up their music eagerly, and were soon playing as
of old. Perhaps the very secrecy lent the lessons charm.

The hours spent in the forest and cave were a great success, but one
day Fritz found a small drum at the palace, and forgetting the King's
orders he started to march about the halls beating it, followed by the
admiring Wilhelmina. Suddenly, in the middle of the triumphal
procession, the King came upon them. Poor Fritz dropped the drumsticks
and stood at attention, while Wilhelmina, behind him, grew white with
fear of what should happen.

To their amazement the King's stern face softened; he smiled, then he
laughed and clapped his hands. "Ah, Fritz, now you're a soldier! I
mistook you for one of my own guard, boy."

The King was delighted. He thought that at last his son was fired with
martial fervor. While the boy went back through the halls beating his
drum F