On this day, as on the other two days after the battle, they cured the dead and the wounded with the bottles of loca, and all were well again. When Jack went to the wood, he left the mare and the bear in it and became Hookedy-Crookedy again, and went home and to his garden. The Yellow Rose came to him and had wonderful news for him this day about the terrible grand fellow entirely, who had won the battle for her father that day; brother to the two brave fellows who had won the battles on the other two days.
“Well,” says Jack, says he, “those must be wonderful chaps. I wish I had been there; but I had to be away on a message for your father all day.”
“Oh, my poor Hookedy-Crookedy,” says she, “it was better so, for what could you do?”
The next day, when it was near dinner time, he went off to the wood to the mare and the bear and got on the suit he had worn the day before in the battle, and mounted the mare and rode for the castle, and when he came there all the gates happened to be closed, but he put the mare at the walls, which were nine miles high, and leapt them.
The King scolded the gate-keepers, but Jack said a trifle like that didn’t harm him or his mare. After dinner the King asked him what he thought of his two daughters and their husbands. Jack said they were very good and asked him if he had any more daughters in his family.
The King said he used to have another, the youngest, but she would not consent to marry as he wished, and he had banished her out of his sight.
Jack said he would like to see her.
The King said he never wished to let her enter company again, but he could not refuse Jack; so the Yellow Rose was sent for.
Jack fell a-chatting with her and used all his arts to win her, and of course, in this handsome Jack she did not recognize ugly little Hookedy-Crookedy. He told her he had heard that she had the very bad taste to fall in love with an ugly, crooked, wee fellow in her father’s garden.
“I am a handsome fellow, and a rich prince,” says Jack, “and I will give you myself and all I possess if you will only say you will accept me.”