When the King heard that he was a wroth and angry man. Now he himself would go out to the hill and buy the pipe, for there was no trusting the womenfolk. If he once had the pipe in his hands there would be no losing it again, and of that he felt very sure. So he mounted his old mare Whitey and rode over to the hillside. There he hid himself among the bushes, and he hid old Whitey there with him, and he watched until he had seen all that the others had told him about. Then he came out and tried to strike a bargain with the lad. But this time it seemed as though Boots would not sell the pipe,—neither for love nor money. The King offered him three hundred dollars, and four hundred dollars, and five hundred dollars for it, and still Boots said no.
“Listen!” said Boots suddenly. “If you’ll go over there in the bushes and kiss old Whitey on the mouth five-and-twenty times, I’ll sell you the pipe for five hundred dollars, but not otherwise.”
That was a thing the King was loath to do, for it ill befitted a king to kiss an old horse, but have the pipe he must and would; and besides there was nobody there to see him do it but Boots, and he did not count. “May I spread a handkerchief between old Whitey’s mouth and mine before I do it?” asked the King.
Yes, he might do that.
So the King went back into the bushes and spread his handkerchief over old Whitey’s mouth and kissed her through it five-and-twenty times. Then he came back and the lad gave him the pipe, and the King mounted and rode away with it, and he was well pleased with himself for his cleverness, and he held the pipe tight in one hand and the bridle in the other. “No danger of my losing it as the Queen and the Princess did,” thought he. But scarcely had the King reached the palace steps when the pipe slipped through his fingers like water, and what became of it he did not know.
But when Boots drove the hares home that evening he had the pipe safely hidden away up his sleeve, though nobody knew it.
And now how about the Princess? Would the King keep his promise and give her to the herdsman for a wife?
But that was a thing the King and Queen could not bear to think of.
They put their heads together and talked and talked, and the more they talked the more unwilling they were to have a herdsman in the family. So in the end this is what they said. The Princess was a very clever girl, and she must have a clever lad for a husband. If Boots could tell bigger stories than the Princess then he should have her for a wife, but if she could tell bigger stories than he, then he should have three red strips cut from his back and be beaten all the way home.
To this Boots agreed.