The archers came in a row, fitted the arrows to the bows, the bows were raised and ready to shoot, when, on a sudden, from the Snake there issued a voice which spoke as follows:
"O archers, wait, wait and hear me before you shoot. It is not fair to carry out the sentence before you have heard the case. Is not this a good law: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth? Is it not so, O King?"
"Yes," replied the King, "that is our law."
"Then," said the snake, "I plead the law. Your son has made me a widow, so it is fair and right that I should make his wife a widow."
"That sounds right enough," said the King, "but right and law are not always the same thing. We had better ask somebody who knows."
They asked all the judges, but none of them could tell the law of the matter. They shook their heads, and said they would look up all their law-books, and see whether anything of the sort had ever happened before, and if so, how it had been decided. That is the way judges used to decide cases in that country, though I dare say it sounds to you a very funny way. It looked as if they had not much sense in their own heads, and perhaps that was true. The upshot of it all was that not a judge would give an opinion; so the King sent messengers all over the countryside, to see if they could find somebody somewhere who knew something.
One of these messengers found a party of five shepherds, who were sitting upon a hill and trying to decide a quarrel of their own. They gave their opinions so freely, and in language so very strong, that the King's messenger said to himself, "Here are the men for us. Here are five men, each with an opinion of his own, and all different." Posthaste he scurried back to the King, and told him that he had found at last some one ready to judge the knotty point.
So the King and the Queen, and the Prince and Princess, and all the courtiers, got on horseback, and away they galloped to the hill whereupon the five shepherds were sitting, and the Snake too went with them, coiled around the neck of the Prince.
When they got to the shepherds' hill, the shepherds were dreadfully frightened. At first they thought the strangers were a gang of robbers, and when they saw it was the King their next thought was that one of their misdeeds had been found out; and each of them began thinking what was the last thing he had done, and wondering, was it that?
But the King and the courtiers got off their horses, and said good day, in the most civil way. So the shepherds felt their minds set at ease again. Then the King said: