"'Well! if you will give me a thousand dollars, and then go and kiss yon white horse down in the marsh there, behind the big fir-tree, you shall have my pipe.'
"'Isn't it to be had for any other price?' asked the king.
"'No, it is not,' said Osborn.
"'Well! but I may put my silken pockethandkerchief between us?' said the king.
"Very good; he might have leave to do that. And so he got the pipe, and put it into his purse. And the purse he put into his pocket, and buttoned it up tight; and so off he strode to his home. But when he reached the grange, and was going to pull out his pipe, he fared no better than the women folk; he hadn't the pipe any more than they, and there came Osborn Boots driving home the flock of hares, and not a hair was missing.
"The king was both spiteful and wroth, to think that he had fooled them all round, and cheated him out of the pipe as well; and now he said Boots must lose his life, there was no question of it, and the queen said the same: it was best to put such a rogue out of the way red-handed.
"Osborn thought it neither fair nor right, for he had done nothing but what they told him to do; and so he had guarded his back and life as best he might.
"So the king said there was no help for it; but if he could lie the great brewing-vat so full of lies that it ran over, then he might keep his life.
"That was neither a long nor perilous piece of work: he was quite game to do that, said Osborn Boots. So he began to tell how it had all happened from the very first. He told about the old wife and her nose in the log, and then he went on to say, 'Well, but I must lie faster if the vat is to be full.' So he went on to tell of the pipe and how he got it; and of the maid, how she came to him and wanted to buy it for a hundred dollars, and of all the kisses she had to give besides, away there in the wood. Then he told of the princess how she came and kissed him so sweetly for the pipe when no one could see or hear it all away there in the wood. Then he stopped and said, 'I must lie faster if the vat is ever to be full.' So he told of the queen, how close she was about the money and how overflowing she was with her smacks. 'You know I must lie hard to get the vat full,' said Osborn.
"'For my part,' said the queen, 'I think it's pretty full already.'