"Well, I've heard from my grandmother's grandmother that something of the kind passed this way, but that was in the good old times, when my grandmother's grandmother baked halfpenny cakes and gave back the halfpenny."
Then all the trolls burst out laughing: "Ha, ha, ha!" they laughed and held on to one another.
"If we have slept so long we may as well turn our noses homeward, and go to sleep again," they said, and so they went back the way they came.
The fox then set off after the Prince, but when they came to the city where the inn and his brothers were, he said:
"I dare not go through the town on account of the dogs; I must go my own way just above here, but you must take good care your brothers do not get hold of you."
But when the Prince came into the city he thought it would be too bad if he did not look in upon his brothers and have a word with them, and so he tarried there for a while.
When the brothers saw him they came out and took the damsel, and the horse, and the bird, and the linden tree, and everything from him, and they put him in a barrel, and threw him into the sea; and so they set off home to the King's palace, with the damsel, and the horse, and the bird, and the linden tree, and everything. But the damsel would not speak, and she became pale and wretched to look upon; the horse got so thin and miserable that it could hardly hang together; the bird became silent and shone no more, and the linden tree withered.
In the meantime the fox was sneaking about outside the city where the inn and the merriment were, and was waiting for the Prince and the damsel, and wondering why they did not return.
He went hither and thither, waiting and watching for them, and at last he came down to the shore, and when he saw the barrel, which was lying out at sea drifting, he shouted: "Why are you drifting about there, you empty barrel?"
"Oh, it is I," said the Prince in the barrel.