K.P.
I.
There was a king travelling through the country, and he and those with him were so far away from home that darkness caught them by the heels, and they had to stop at a stone mill for the night, because there was no other place handy.
While they sat at supper, they heard a sound in the next room, and it was a baby crying.
The miller stood in the corner, back of the stove, with his hat in his hand. “What is that noise?” said the king to him.
“Oh! it is nothing but another baby that the good storks have brought into the house to-day,” said the miller.
Now there was a wise man travelling along with the king, who could read the stars and everything that they told as easily as one can read one’s A B C’s in a book after one knows them, and the king, for a bit of a jest, would have him find out what the stars had to foretell of the miller’s baby. So the wise man went out and took a peep up in the sky, and by and by he came in again.
“Well,” said the king, “and what did the stars tell you?”