“The saucer?” repeated Peter, blankly. “Please you, my lord, it never had a saucer!”
“Never had a saucer?” repeated the baron. “You don’t mean to tell me that such a cup as that was ever made without a saucer to go with it!”
“Nevertheless, my lord, I have no saucer,” said Peter, humbly.
“You are deceiving me,” said the baron, sternly. Then, fixing his eye upon poor Peter, “Where did you get that cup?” said he, abruptly. “Me-thinks you are rather a poor man to possess such a treasure.”
“Oh, good my lord!” cried poor Peter, “I will tell you the whole truth. An old man in the forest gave it to my daughter Kate.”
“Do you expect me to believe such a story as that?” exclaimed the baron. “You stole it, you thief!” he roared, at the same time seizing Peter by the collar. “Ho! guards! Arrest this man, and throw him into the dungeon,” cried he to his attendants.
“Mercy! mercy, my lord!” cried poor Peter, falling on his knees. But the guards dragged him off in spite of his cries, and popped him into a dungeon, where he was left to meditate over his folly in not heeding his daughter’s advice.
II.—The Goose that was to lay the Golden Egg.
Catherine waited anxiously for her father’s return, but her fears told her all when night came and he came not.
After she had put the children to bed, having given them each a piece of bread, which she had borrowed from a kind neighbor, she threw a shawl around her head and started off in the direction of Castle Dunderhead, where her fears told her only too plainly her father was. The bars of the dungeon windows came upon a level with the ground, like those of a cellar.