The king was curious to learn how the youth contrived to control the rabbits so admirably, and he sent a servant to watch him. By and by the servant came peeping about among the trees and spied Philip asleep in the pleasant shade of the woodland. He hid in a thicket and waited. Toward evening he saw Philip rise to his feet and blow his horn, and immediately all the rabbits came scampering about him. The servant hastened home and told the king what he had observed, and the king told his wife and daughter.
“Unless we put a stop to his using that horn,” said the princess, “I shall have to marry him, and he is only a common farmer’s son. Tomorrow I shall go to the wood, and while he is asleep I will take his horn and bring it home to the palace.”
She went to the wood just as she had planned, and she had little trouble in getting possession of the horn. When Philip awoke it was gone—and how was he to bring the rabbits together? But he remembered that the old woman had said he could get it back by wishing. So he wished for it; and the princess, who had nearly reached the palace, felt it suddenly slip through her fingers, and though she searched all about she could not find it. The horn had returned to the hands of Philip in the woodland, and he immediately blew it to fetch the rabbits together, and then he went with them to the palace.
Philip blows into the large end of his horn
The royal family saw that Philip had the horn, and the queen said she would go the next day and take it, and they might be sure she would bring it home. The morrow came, and in the early afternoon off she tramped to the wood. She secured the horn and hurried away with it, holding it very tight, but as she approached the palace it slipped from her grasp, and by and by the rabbit-keeper returned with his horn and flock as usual.
“I shall have to look into this matter myself,” grumbled the king, “if we are going to get that wretched horn into our possession. You women plan all right, but it usually takes a man to carry a plan to a successful conclusion.”
The following day, while Philip was having his nap in the wood, the king came to the spot where the youth lay and took the horn. To make doubly sure of it, the king put the horn in a bag he had brought along for the purpose. Back he went to the palace. His wife and daughter met him at the door, and he triumphantly opened the bag to show them the horn; but it was not there. He had not succeeded any better than the women folk. “Plague take the fellow!” he exclaimed. “There is some magic about the way that horn disappears. The lad gets the best of us every time, and I suppose he might as well marry into the family first as last.”
Pretty soon Philip arrived with his flock of rabbits and put them in their night quarters. Then he heard the king calling to him, and went to the palace porch, where he found all the royal family waiting for him. “What sort of a horn is that of yours?” asked the king. “It looks ordinary enough, but I am sure it has some strange power or you would not be able to take such excellent care of the rabbits and never lose a single one of them.”
“It was given to me by an old woman,” said Philip, “and if I blow in one end it does one thing, and if I blow in the other it does the opposite.”