"The Princess Bertha!" exclaimed one.
"Your wife!" laughed another.
"Why, the man's mad, or else is not quite sober yet," cried a third.
"Stay," said the fourth; "it is possible he has got the dwarf princess concealed about his person. So much the better, we shall get them both together, and divide the reward between us. Let us search him."
"Ha! is that so?" said the first.
A rigid search was made on the person of Hans, but they found not the princess.
"Hold there, ruffians!" cried Hans. "Ye shall do the princess no harm. Do you hear; for, besides being your rightful queen, she is my wife."
A general laugh ensued. Hans was no less puzzled than the men themselves at her disappearance.
"Where can she be?" quoth he. "All last night she was watching beside me, like a true wife, and now——"
"Come, the fellow is dreaming still, or else trying to befool us," cried one of the men, at length. "Let us hasten with him to the princess."