"'The first proof is that you must take these scissors and keep them, and give them to me at mid-day to-morrow. It is not so very great a trial, I fancy,' she said, and made a face; 'but if you can't stand it, you lose your life; it is the law, and so you will be drawn and quartered, and your body will be stuck on stakes, and your head over the gate, just like those lovers of mine, whose skulls and skeletons you see outside the king's castle.'
"'That is no such great art,' thought the lad.
"But the princess was so merry and mad, and flirted so much with him, that he forgot all about the scissors and himself, and so while they played and sported, she stole the scissors away from him without his knowing it. When he went up to his room at night, and told how he had fared, and what she had said to him, and about the scissors she gave him to keep, the companion said,—
"'Of course you have the scissors safe and sure.'
"Then he searched in all his pockets; but there were no scissors, and the lad was in a sad way when he found them wanting.
"'Well! well!' said the companion; 'I'll see if I can't get you them again.'
"With that he went down into the stable, and there stood a big, fat Billygoat, which belonged to the princess, and it was of that breed that it could fly many times faster through the air than it could run on land. So he took the Three-Sister Sword, and gave it a stroke between the horns, and said,—
"'When rides the princess to see her lover to-night?'
"The Billygoat baaed, and said it dared not say, but when it had another stroke, it said the princess was coming at eleven o'clock. Then the companion put on the Three-Sister Hat, and all at once he became invisible, and so he waited for her. When she came, she took and rubbed the Billygoat with an ointment which she had in a great horn, and said,—
"'Away, away, o'er roof tree and steeple, o'er land, o'er sea, o'er hill, o'er dale, to my true love who awaits me in fell this night.'