“He doesn’t seem to mind that! We’ll try the next thing—which is, to drive a nail in his hind heel.—Now look here, Joan! Here, in one of his hind shoes, is a hole that looks as if one of the nails had come out! That is what struck me, and brought the rime into my head! But how drive a nail into such a hole as that?”
“Perhaps a tack would go in,” said Joan, rising. “I shall pull one out of the carpet.”
“A tack would be much too large, I think,” said Cosmo. “Perhaps a brad out of the gimp of that chair would do.—Or, stay, I know! Have you got a hair-pin you could give me?”
Joan sat down again on the bed, took off her bonnet, and searching in her thick hair soon found one. Cosmo took it eagerly, and applied it to the hole in the shoe. Nothing the least larger would have gone in. He pushed it gently, then a little harder—felt as if something yielded a little, returning his pressure, and pushed a little harder still. Something gave way, and a low noise followed, as of a watch running down. The two faces looked at each other, one red, and one pale. The sound ceased. They waited a little, in almost breathless silence. Nothing followed.
“Now,” said Cosmo, “for the last thing!”
“Not quite the last,” returned Joan, with what was nearly an hysterical laugh, trying to shake off the fear that grew upon her; “the last thing is to stand up and call the king your brother.”
“That much, as non-essential, I daresay we shall omit,” replied Cosmo.—“The next then is, to pull his ears from each other.”
He took hold of one of the tiny ears betwixt the finger and thumb of each hand, and pulled. The body of the horse came asunder, divided down the back, and showed inside of it a piece of paper. Cosmo took it out. It was crushed, rather than folded, round something soft. He handed it to Joan.
“It is your turn now, Joan,” he said; “you open it. I have done my part.”
Cosmo’s eyes were now fixed on the movements of Joan’s fingers undoing the little parcel, as hers had been on his while he was finding it. Within the paper was a piece of cotton wool. Joan dropped the paper, and unfolded the wool. Bedded in the middle of that were two rings. The eyes of Cosmo fixed themselves on one of them—the eyes of Joan upon the other. In the one Cosmo recognized a large diamond; in the other Joan saw a dark stone engraved with the Mergwain arms.