"'I am the wise priest and the true prophet,' said the charcoal-burner.
"'Then you can tell me,' said the king, 'who has taken my ring?'
"'Yes!' said the charcoal-burner; 'it isn't so right against rhyme and reason that what has happened in darkness should come to light; but it isn't every year that salmon spawn in fir-tree tops. Here have I been a curate for seven years, trying to feed myself and my children, and I haven't got a living yet. If that thief is to be found out, I must have lots of time and reams of paper; for I must write and reckon, and track him out through many lands.'
"'Yes! he should have as much time and paper as he chose, if he would only lay his finger on the thief.'
"So they shut him up by himself in a room in the king's palace, and it was not long before they found out that he must know much more than his Lord's Prayer; for he scribbled over so much paper that it lay in great heaps and rolls, and yet there was not a man who could make out a word of what he wrote, for it looked like nothing else than pot-hooks and hangers. But, as he did this, time went on, and still there was not a trace of the thief. At last the king got weary, and so he said, if the priest couldn't find the thief in three days he should lose his life.
"'More haste, worse speed. You can't cart coal till the pit is cool,' said the charcoal-burner. But the king stuck to his word—that he did; and the charcoal-burner felt his life wasn't worth much.
"Now there were three of the king's servants who waited on the charcoal-burner day by day, in turn, and these three fellows had stolen the ring between them. So when one of these servants came into the room and cleared the table when he had eaten his supper, and was going out again, the charcoal-burner heaved a deep sigh as he looked after him, and said,
"'There goes the first of them!' but he only meant the first of the three days he had still to live.
"'That priest knows more than how to fill his mouth,' said the servant, when he was alone with his fellows; for he said, I was the first of them.'
"The next day, the second servant was to mark what the prisoner said when he waited on him, and sure enough when he went out, after clearing the table, the charcoal-burner stared him full in the face and fetched a deep sigh, and said,