answered Gottfried Gottfried. "You see, little Princess, I had very many
things to cut with it last night."

"What a pity the Prince had not time to wait and see you! He is so very
fond of going out into the forest with the woodman. Once he took me to
see the tallest tree in all our woods cut down with just such an axe as
that--only it was not red. Have you ever seen a high tree cut down?"

"I have cut down some pretty tall ones myself!" said the Duke's Justicer,
smiling quietly at her.

"Ah, but not as tall as my father! It is beautiful to see him strip
his doublet and lay to. They say there is not a woodman like him in
all our land."

Helene looked at my father, whose arms were folded in his great cloak.

"But you have fine strong arms too," she said. "You look as if you could
cut things. Did my father ever see you cut down tall trees?"

"Yes," said Gottfried Gottfried, slowly, "once!"

"And did he say that you cut well?" the little maid went on, with a
strange, wilful persistence in her idea.

"He neither said that I did well nor yet that I did ill," replied
Gottfried Gottfried.

"Ah!" said Helene, "that was just like the Prince. He was afraid of
flattering you and making you unfit for your work. But if he said