"'Can that be your father? my son,' said the princess to her boy, who was playing with a golden apple.
"'No,' said the child, 'my father doesn't crawl about like a cheesemite.'
"So they sent another of the same stamp, and this time it was Ritter Red. But it fared no better with him than with the first one, and the princess sent word by him, if they didn't make haste and send the right one, it should go ill with them. When they heard that they were forced to wake up Boots with the water of life; and so he went down to the ship to the princess, but he didn't make too low a bow, I should think; he only nodded his head and brought out the breadth he had cut out of the skirt of the princess in the golden castle.
"'That's my father! that's my father!' bawled out the boy, and gave him the golden apple he was playing with.
"Then there was great joy and mirth all over the realm, and the old king was the gladdest of all of them, because he had got his darling back again. But when what Ritter Red and the eldest princess had done to Boots came out, the king asked to have them both rolled down a hill, each in a cask full of spikes and nails; but Boots and the youngest princess begged hard for them, and so they got off with life.
"Now it happened one day, as they were about to begin the bridal feast, that they stood looking out of window,—it was towards spring, just when they were turning out the horses and cows after the winter—and the last that came out of the stable was the ass; but it was so starved that it came out of the stable-door on its knees.
"Then Boots was cut to the heart because he had forgotten it, and he went down and did not know how to make it up to the poor beast. But the ass said the best thing he could do was to cut his head off. That he was very loath to do, but the ass begged so prettily that he had to yield, and did it at last; and as soon as ever his head fell in the yard, it was all over with the shape which had been thrown over him by witchcraft, and there stood the handsomest prince any one cared to see. He got the second princess to wife, and they fell to keeping the bridal feast, so that it was heard and talked of over seven kingdoms.
'Then they built themselves houses,
And stitched themselves shoon,
And had so many bairns
They reached up to the moon.'"