One day the young king of that country went a-hunting, and all of his court with him, and four-and-twenty hounds besides. They came riding by the pit where the maiden sat, and there the hounds stopped and began to whimper and to howl, for they knew very well that human flesh and blood was down below.
“Listen to the hounds,” says the king; “there is somebody fallen into the pit; now who will go down and bring the unfortunate up again?”
At this everybody looked at his neighbor, but nobody said, “I will go.”
“Very well,” said the king, “then I myself will go down into the pit, if no one else dares to venture.”
So the others lowered the king into the pit, and when he reached the bottom you can guess how he stared and how he wondered; but he had no eyes for the jewels and gold that covered the walls; he had often seen the like of them, but never in all of his days had he beheld such a beauty as the maiden he found there.
Then the people above hauled them up together, and the king set her upon a milk-white horse, and then they all rode away to the palace, for that was where he was to take her. There they dressed her in splendid clothes and put a golden crown upon her head, and then she and the king were married. Around her neck he hung a golden chain and a locket, and in the locket was a picture of himself; on her finger he slipped a ring, and within were secret words which nobody but he and she knew.
One day the wicked Step-mother was walking in the fields, and the two crows sat on the thorn-tree.
“Look,” says the first crow, “yonder goes the beauty.”
“Yes,” says the second, “but she is only as a cabbage to a rose when compared to the lass who followed the golden ball down into the pit, and who has married the handsome young king over at the castle yonder.”
Then, “Caw! caw!” they cried, and flapped their wings and flew away.