After a while the second brother came to the palace, and when the servants heard why he had come they were not slow in bringing him before the King. Yes, the King was as much in need of a herdsman for his hares as ever, but was the lad willing to run the risk of having only a beating for his pains?
Yes, the lad was willing to run that risk, for he was almost sure he could keep the herd together, and it was not every day one had a chance of winning a Princess for a wife.
So they took him out to the paddock where the hares were. All morning he herded them there as his brother had done before him, and that was an easy task. But it was in the afternoon that the trouble began. For no sooner did the fresh wind of the hillside ruffle up their fur than away they fled, this way and that, kicking up their heels behind them. It was in vain the lad chased after them and shouted and sweated; he could not keep them together. In the end he had scarcely threescore of them to drive back to the palace in the evening.
And the King was waiting for him with a cudgel in his hands, and if the lad did not get a good drubbing that day, then nobody ever did. When the King finished with him he was black and blue from his head to his heels, and that is all he got for trying to win a Princess for a wife.
Now after the second son had come home again with his doleful tale, Boots sat and thought and thought about what had happened. After a while, however, he rose up and shook the ashes from his clothes and said that now it was his turn to have a try at winning the Princess for his wife.
When the elder brothers heard that they scoffed and hooted. Boots was no better than a numskull anyway, and how could he hope to succeed where they had failed.
Well, all that might be true or it might not, but at any rate he was for having a try at this business, so off he set, just as the other two had before him.
After a while he came to the log where his brothers had seen the hag with her nose caught in the crack, and there she was still, for no one had come by in the meantime to set her free. He stood and stared and stared, for it was a curious sight.
“Oh, you gawk! Why do you stand there staring?” cried the old hag. “Here I have been for twice a hundred years, and no Christian soul will take the trouble to set me free. Drive a wedge into the crack so that I may get my nose out.”
“That I will and gladly, good mother,” said the youth. “Two hundred years is a long time for one to have one’s nose pinched in a crack.”