The King took out his keys, and he fumbled and fumbled, and then he said he had no key there to unlock it.
“Then if you have not, I have,” said the lad, and he raised his fist and with one blow the door was shattered and burst open, and he stepped inside,—and there was the Princess.
Then she rose up and threw her arms about him and kissed him, and she told her father the lad was her own true love who had saved her from the Trolls and had come all this way to find her, and how if she might not have him for her husband, she would pine away with grief and longing.
When the King heard this, he could no longer refuse to let her marry the lad, and indeed he was well enough pleased to have such a clever fellow for a son-in-law, for the lad soon told him of the trick he had played upon him.
So he and the Princess were married and with much rejoicing, and the lad sent back to the Troll’s house for the lions that had been waiting for him there all this time. And when they came, they were given a whole park to roam about in, and the lad and the Princess lived happy forever after, with no misfortunes to trouble them.
THE DUTIFUL DAUGHTER
A Korean Story
There once lived in Korea a rich merchant and his wife who had no children, though they greatly desired them and prayed every day that a child might be granted them.
They had been married sixteen years and were no longer young, when the wife had a wonderful dream.
In her dream she walked in a garden full of beauteous fruits and flowers and singing birds, and as she walked, suddenly a star fell from heaven into her bosom.
As soon as the wife awoke, she told this dream to her husband. “I feel assured,” said she, “that this dream can mean only one thing, and that is that heaven is about to send us a child, and that this child will be as a star for beauty and wonder and grace.”