He went on then to the two other old men, and gave an apple to both of them, and no sooner did they eat it than they were like young boys again.
Then the King’s son went back to the crossroads, for it was the end of the year and a day, and he was the first to come there, and he fell asleep. The two brothers came and saw him there, and they stole the bag of apples from under his head and put in the place of it a bag of apples that were no use at all. Then they went on to their father’s house, and they gave him the apples they had stolen, and he was cured on the moment; but they told him that what the youngest son was bringing to him was poison apples, that would bring him to his death.
The King was very angry when he heard that, and he went to his butler and said, “Go out to the wood where my son is, and shoot him, and bring his heart here with you on the top of a gun and throw it to the dogs at the door; for I will never have him, or anything belonging to him, brought into the house,” he said.
So the butler got the gun, and went out to the wood; and when he saw the young man he was going to shoot him. “Why would you do that?” said he. So the butler told him all the father ordered him; and the young man said, “Do not shoot me, but save me. And this is what you will do. Go into the wood until you meet with a woodcock, and shoot it, and take the heart out of it, for that is most like the heart of a man. Bring the woodcock’s heart to my father’s house,” he said, “and throw it to the dogs at the door.”
So the butler did that, and spared him, and took the woodcock’s heart and threw it to the dogs at the door.
It was a good while after that, a beautiful young lady came to the King’s doorway in a coach and four, and stopped at the door. “Send out my husband to me here,” she said. So the eldest son came out to her. “Was it you came to the garden for the apples?” says she. “It was,” says he. “What things did you take notice of in the cottage where I was?” says she.
So he began telling of this thing and that thing that never was in it at all.
And when she heard that she gave him a clout that knocked his head as solid as any stone in the wall.
Then the second son came out, and she asked him the same question, and he told the same lies, and she gave him another clout that left his head as solid as any stone in the wall.
When the King heard all that, he knew they had deceived him, and that it was the youngest son who got the apples for his cure, and he began to cry after him and to lament that he was not living to come back again. “Would you like to know he is living yet?” says the butler. “I would sooner hear it than any word ever I heard,” says the King.