poor fellow should die of hunger!

Poor Charming was bewildered when the King's guards came to carry him off to prison. He could not imagine why the King had turned against him in this unfair way. It made him miserable enough to be in a cold, damp cell, with no food to eat, and no water to drink except that from a little stream which flowed through the cell. He had no bed--just a dirty pile of straw. But all these discomforts were as nothing to the worry he had as to why the King, whom he had always liked, had treated him so unjustly. He used to talk to himself about it. One day he said, as he had thought dozens of times before:

"What have I done that my kindest friend, to whom I have always been faithful, should have turned against me and left me to die in this prison cell?"

As luck would have it, the King himself was passing by the dungeon where Charming was confined when he spoke these words, and the King heard them. Perhaps the King's better self had been telling him that he ought at least to have given Charming a chance to tell his side of the story before condemning him to die. I do not know. At any rate when he heard this voice coming out of the dungeon he insisted on going in at once to see Charming.

"Your Gracious Majesty," said Charming, "I could not believe that it was really your wish that I be confined in this cell. All my life I have had no wish but to serve you faithfully."

"Charming!" the King exclaimed, "can this be true! They told me that you have made fun of me because the Princess Goldenlocks had refused to marry me."

"I, Your Majesty, mocked you?" Charming was astonished. "That is not true. It is true, however, that I said that if you would send me to Goldenlocks I believed I could persuade her to become your wife, because I know so many good things about you which I would tell her. I could paint such a lovely picture of you that she could not possibly help falling in love with your Majesty."

Then the King knew that he had been deceived by his courtiers, and he felt that he had been very silly to believe them. He took Charming with him to the palace right away, and, after having the best supper which the cooks could prepare served for Charming, the King asked him to go and see whether it was not yet possible to persuade Goldenlocks to marry him.

Charming did not set off with any such retinue of servants as had the other ambassador. The King gave him letters to the Princess, and 

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