The land beyond the East Tower, across the moat, belonged to a neighbouring king, who had been away at war for many years. No lonelier place than the tower could have been found for a prison.
“A safe place for the girl,” said the false king to his wicked counsellors when they came back and told him they had locked Princess Katrina into the upper room of the tower.
“But suppose she dies there?” said one of the counsellors, who had a daughter at home, of about Katrina’s age.
“If she dies, no one will be the wiser, and you will be rich men,” said the king. “Be sure you keep the old nurse drugged, and a guard to watch her.”
After that, when the royal ladies of the court asked King Wulfred where the princess was, he told them she had been suddenly called away by the illness of her aunt in another kingdom, and that the old nurse had gone with the princess.
Katrina was very lonely and sad the first few days in the round upper room of the old stone tower. Three times each day the strong door was unlocked and food and candles were set into the room. The man who brought the food and the three candles would not say a word in answer to Katrina’s questions. In the daytime, the princess walked around the room, looking from one after another of the three windows at the trees outside. When night came, she put all three of her candles at the window where the leaves of the trees seemed thinnest, hoping that some one passing might see the light, and wonder at its being there in the old, deserted tower, and so come to her rescue.
On the third day, the princess saw the bright eyes of a gray squirrel looking in at the window; she put some food upon the window-sill, and presently the squirrel came in through the iron bars, ate the food, then sat up on his haunches and looked at her quite fearlessly.
“I would help you if I could,” said the gray squirrel, unexpectedly, “but all I can do is to give you my company.”
Katrina was greatly surprised to hear the squirrel speak, but she answered quickly: “If you will talk with me sometimes that will help me, for I am so lonely.”
“I will come every day,” he replied. “Now I must go home to arrange my engagements.” Straightening out his splendid bushy tail, he jumped from the window-sill into the thick leaves of an oak-tree, out of sight, like a flash.