so she insisted strongly that her warning should be obeyed. The
king often lost his patience, and was determined to see his
daughter, but the queen always put him off the idea, and so
things went on, until the very day before the princess completed
her fourteenth year.

The king and the queen were out in the garden then, and the king
said, 'Now I can't and I won't wait any longer. I must see my
daughter at once. A few hours, more or less, can't make any
difference.'

The queen begged him to have patience till the morning. When
they had waited so long, they could surely wait a single day
more. But the king was quite unreasonable. 'No nonsense,' said
he; 'she is just as much mine as yours, and I will see her,' and
with that he went straight up to her room.

He burst the door open, and pushed aside the nurse, who tried to
stop him, and there he saw his daughter. She was the loveliest
young princess, red and white, like milk and blood, with clear
blue eyes and golden hair, but right in the middle of her
forehead there was a little tuft of brown hair.

The princess went to meet her father, fell on his neck and kissed
him, but with that she said, 'O father, father! what have you
done now? to-morrow I must die, and you must choose one of three
things: either the land must be smitten with the black
pestilence, or you must have a long and bloody war, or you must
as soon as I am dead, lay me in a plain wooden chest, and set it
in the church, and for a whole year place a sentinel beside it