“Why, my poor fellow, you surely know, don’t you? that the King with a great force is coming to destroy you and all your people!”
“What!” the Worm gasped, turning a sickly green with fright. He knew he was fat and helpless and could never again fight as in the years gone by.
“Don’t go just yet!” he begged the Fox. “When is the King coming?”
“He’s on the highway now! That’s why I must be going! Good-by!”
“My dear Fox, stay just a moment and I’ll reward you richly! Help me to hide so that the King won’t find me! What about the shed where the linen is stored? I could crawl under the linen and then if you locked the door from the outside the King could never find me.”
“Very well,” the Fox agreed, “but we must hurry!”
So they ran outside to the shed where the linen was kept and the Worm hid himself under the linen. The Fox locked the door, then set fire to the shed, and soon there was nothing left of that wicked old dragon, the Worm, but a handful of ashes.
The Fox now called together the dragon’s household and talked them over to Mikko as he had the woodsmen and the grooms and the shepherds.
Meanwhile the King and his party were slowly covering the ground over which the Fox had sped so quickly. When they came to the ten woodsmen in blue smocks, the King said:
“I wonder whose woodsmen those are.”