“Phew!” says the drummer, “I am glad to be here at last!”
And now for the wonder of all this: The old man was an old man no longer, but a splendid tall fellow with hair as yellow as gold. “And who do you think I am?” said he.
But of that the drummer knew no more than the mouse in the haystack, so he shook his head, and said nothing.
“I am king of the storks, and here I have sat for many days; for the wicked one-eyed witch who lives on the glass hill put it upon me for a spell that I should be an old man until somebody should carry me over the water. You are the first to do that, and you shall not lose by it. Here is a little bone whistle; whenever you are in trouble just blow a turn or two on it, and I will be by to help you.”
Thereupon King Stork drew a feather cap out of his pocket and clapped it on his head, and away he flew, for he was turned into a great, long, red-legged stork as quick as a wink.
But the drummer trudged on the way he was going, as merry as a cricket, for it is not everybody who cracks his shins against such luck as he had stumbled over, I can tell you. By and by he came to the town over the hill, and there he found great bills stuck up over the walls. They were all of them proclamations. And this is what they said:
The princess of that town was as clever as she was pretty; that was saying a great deal, for she was the handsomest in the whole world. (“Phew! but that is a fine lass for sure and certain,” said the drummer.) So it was proclaimed that any lad who could answer a question the princess would ask, and would ask a question the princess could not answer, and would catch the bird that she would be wanting, should have her for his wife and half of the kingdom to boot. (“Hi! but here is luck for a clever lad,” says the drummer.) But whoever should fail in any one of the three tasks should have his head chopped off as sure as he lived. (“Ho! but she is a wicked one for all that,” says the drummer.)
That was what the proclamation said, and the drummer would have a try for her; “for,” said he, “it is a poor fellow who cannot manage a wife when he has her”—and he knew as much about that business as a goose about churning butter. As for chopping off heads, he never bothered his own about that; for, if one never goes out for fear of rain one never catches fish.
Off he went to the king’s castle as fast as he could step, and there he knocked on the door, as bold as though his own grandmother lived there.
