Zigzag Journeys in Northern Lands; / The Rhine to the Arctic; A Summer Trip of the Zigzag Club Through Holland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden

by Hezekiah Butterworth

The next day the king, who loved a jest, summoned his court to a meadow to witness the race, and to see what the bumptious pygmy could do. Everybody was on tiptoe of expectation, being sure that something amusing would follow.

When Little Mook appeared he bowed to the spectators, who laughed at him. When the signal was given for the two to start, Little Mook allowed the runner to go ahead of him for a little time, but when the latter drew near the king’s seat he passed him, to the wonder of all the people, and easily won the race.

The king was delighted, the princess waved her veil, and the people all shouted, “Huzza for Little Mook!”

So Little Mook became the royal messenger, and surpassed all the runners in the world with his magic slippers.

But Little Mook’s great success with his magic slippers excited envy, and made him bitter enemies, and at last the king himself came to believe the stories of his enemies, and turned against him and banished him from his kingdom.

Little Mook wandered away, sore at heart, and as friendless as when he had left home and the house of the old woman. Just beyond the confines of the kingdom he came to a grove of fig-trees full of fruit.

He stopped to rest and refresh himself with the fruit. There were two trees that bore the finest figs he had ever seen. He gathered some figs from one of them, but as he was eating them his nose and ears began to grow, and when he looked down into a clear, pure stream near by, he saw that his head had been changed into a head like a donkey.

He sat down under the other fig-tree in despair. At last he took up a fig that had fallen from this tree, and ate it. Immediately his nose and ears became smaller and smaller and resumed their natural shape. Then he perceived that the trees bore magic fruit.

“Happy thought!” said Little Mook. “I will go back to the palace and sell the fruit of the first tree to the royal household, and then I will turn doctor, and give the donkeys the fruit of the second tree as medicine. But I will not give the old king any medicine.”