The king's son came to the fox, and the fox hid him in his burrow, and brought him butter and eggs from the royal dairy. This was better fare than the king's son had had since the beginning of his wanderings, and he thanked the fox warmly for his friendship. "On the contrary," said the fox, "I am under an obligation to you; for ever since you came to be my guest I have felt like an honest man." "If I live to be king," said the king's son, "you shall always have butter and eggs from the royal dairy, and be as honest as you like."
The queen hugged her magic crystal for a whole week, but could make nothing out of it: for her crystal showed her nothing of the king's son's hiding-place, nor of the fox at his nightly thefts of butter and eggs from the royal dairy. But it so happened that this same fox was a sort of half-brother of the queen's; and so guilty did he feel with his brand-new good conscience that he quite left off going to see her. So in a little while the queen, with her suspicions and her magic crystal, had nosed out the young king's hiding-place.
The fox said to the king's son: "The queen's eye is on you! Get out and run for your life, for if you stay here till to-morrow, you will wake up and find yourself a dead goose!"
"But where else can I go to?" asked the king's son. "Is there any place left for me?" The fox laughed, and winked, and whispered a word; and all at once the king's son got up and went.
The queen had said to her messengers, "Go and look in the fox's hole; and you shall find him!" But the messengers came and dug up the burrow, and found butter and eggs from the royal dairy, but of the king's son never a sign.
The king's son came to the palace, and as he crept through the gardens he found there his little brother alone at play,—playing sadly because now he was all alone. Then the king's son stopped and said, "Little brother, do you so much wish to be king?" And taking off the crown, he put it upon his brother's head. Then he went on through underground ways and corridors, till he came to the palace dungeons.
Now a dungeon is a hard thing to get out of, but it is easy enough to get into. He came to the deepest and darkest dungeon of all, and there he opened the door, and went in and hid himself.
The queen's son came running to his mother, wearing the king's crown. "Oh, mother," he said, "I am frightened! while I was playing, my brother came looking all dead and white, and put this crown on my head. Take it off for me, it hurts!"
When the queen saw the crown on her son's head, she was horribly afraid; for that it should have so come there was the most unlikely thing of all. She fetched her crystal ball, and looked in, asking where the king's son might be, and, for answer, the crystal became black as night.
Then said the queen to herself, "He is dead at last!"