"What?" cried the Princess Osra; and the King was so interested that he rose up from behind the water-butt, and, leaning his elbows on the window-sill, looked in and saw all that happened.
"It being," pursued the Miller of Hofbau, "all the same to me, so that I got what I wanted, why, when you did not come——"
"He married his cousin," said the priest.
A sudden roar of laughter came from the window. All three turned round, but the King ducked his head and crouched again behind the water-butt before they saw him.
"Who was that?" cried the priest.
"A lad that came to hold my horse," answered Osra hastily, and then she turned fiercely on the miller.
"And that," she said, "was all you wanted! I thought you loved me."
"Aye, I liked you very well," said the miller. "You are a handy——" A stamp of her foot drowned the rest. "But you should have come in time," he went on.
"And this Gertrude—is she pretty?" demanded Osra.
"Gertrude is well enough," said the miller. "But she has only two hundred crowns." And he put the purse, now full again, on the table with a resigned sigh.