can, without doubt,” said the King’s son.
“You shall have a hard bed to-night, then,” says the old King. “Come with me till I show it to you.” He brought him out then and showed him a great tree with a fork in it, and said, “Get up there and sleep in the fork, and be ready with the rise of the sun.”
He went up into the fork, but as soon as the old King was asleep the young daughter came and brought him into a fine room, and kept him there until the old King was about to rise. Then she put him out again into the fork of the tree.
With the rise of the sun the old King came to him, and said, “Come down now and come with me until I show you the thing that you have to do to-day.”
He brought the King’s son to the brink of a lake and showed him an old castle, and said to him, “Throw every stone in that castle out into the loch, and let you have it done before the sun goes down in the evening.” He went away from him then.
The King’s son began working, but the stones were stuck to one another so fast that he was not able to raise one of them, and if he were to be working until this day, there would not be one stone out of the castle. He sat down then, thinking what he ought to do, and it was not long until the daughter of the old King came to him and said, “What is the cause of your grief?” He told her the work which he had to do. “Let that put no grief on you; I will do it,” said she. Then she gave him bread, meat, and wine, pulled out a little enchanted rod, struck a blow on the old castle, and in a moment every stone of it was at the bottom of the lake. “Now,” said she, “do not tell my father that it was I who did the work for you.”
When the sun was going down in the evening, the old King came and said, “I see that you have your day’s work done.”
“I have,” said the King’s son; “I can do any work at all.”
The old King thought now that the King’s son had great powers of enchantment, and he said to him, “Your day’s work for to-morrow is to lift the stones out of the loch, and to set up the castle again as it was before.”