“He just was a chap to ride!” they said; “so grand a knight isn’t to be found in the wide world.”
“Oh!” said Boots, “I should so like to have seen him, that I should.”
“Ah!” said his brothers, “his mail shone a deal brighter than the glowing coals which you are always poking and digging at; nasty dirty beast that you are.”
Next day all the knights and princes were to pass before the king and the Princess—it was too late to do so the night before, I suppose—that he who had the gold apple might bring it forth; but one came after another, first the Princes, and then the knights, and still no one could show the gold apple.
“Well,” said the king, “some one must have it, for it was something we all saw with our own eyes, how a man came and rode up and bore it off.”
So he commanded that every man who was in the kingdom should come up to the palace and see if they could show the apple. Well, they all came one after another, but no one had the golden apple, and after a long time the two brothers of Boots came. They were the last of all, so the king asked them if there was no one else in the kingdom who hadn’t come.
“Oh, yes,” said they; “we have a brother, but he never carried off the golden apple. He hasn’t stirred out of the dusthole on any of the three days.”
“Never mind that,” said the king; “he may as well come up to the palace like the rest.”
So Boots had to go up to the palace.