every night.'

The king was frightened indeed, and thought she was raving, but
in order to please her, he said, 'Well, of these three things I
shall choose the last; if you die, I shall lay you at once in a
plain wooden chest, and have it set in the church, and every
night I shall place a sentinel beside it. But you shall not die,
even if you are ill now.'

He immediately summoned all the best doctors in the country, and
they came with all their prescriptions and their medicine
bottles, but next day the princess was stiff and cold in death.
All the doctors could certify to that and they all put their
names to this and appended their seals, and then they had done
all they could.

The king kept his promise. The princess's body was lain the same
day in a plain wooden chest, and set in the chapel of the castle,
and on that night and every night after it, a sentinel was
posted in the church, to keep watch over the chest.

The first morning when they came to let the sentinel out, there
was no sentinel there. They thought he had just got frightened
and run away, and next evening a new one was posted in the
church. In the morning he was also gone. So it went every
night. When they came in the morning to let the sentinel out,
there was no one there, and it was impossible to discover which
way he had gone if he had run away. And what should they run
away for, every one of them, so that nothing more was over heard
or seen of them, from the hour that they were set on guard beside