they come and find you here, when you wake to-morrow you will certainly be dead." "Where shall I go?" asked the king's son. "Wherever I go, she finds me." "Go to the old fox who gets his poultry from the palace, and ask him to hide you in his burrow!" When the queen's messengers came to the pool they found the fishes playing at alibis all about in the water; but nothing of the king's son could they see.[77] [77] The king's son came to the fox, and the fox hid him in his burrow, and brought him butter and eggs from the royal dairy. This was better fare than the king's son had had since the beginning of his wanderings, and he thanked the fox warmly for his friendship. "On the contrary," said the fox, "I am under an obligation to you; for ever since you came to be my guest I have felt like an honest man." "If I live to be king," said the king's son, "you shall always have butter and eggs from the royal dairy, and be as honest as you like." The queen hugged her magic crystal for a whole week, but could make nothing out of it: for her crystal showed her nothing of the king's son's hiding-place, nor of the fox at his nightly thefts of butter and eggs from the royal dairy. But it so happened that this same fox was a sort of half-brother of the queen's; and so guilty did he feel with his brand-new good conscience that he quite left off going to see her. So in a little while the queen, with her suspicions and her magic crystal, had nosed out the young king's hiding-place. The fox said to the king's son: "The queen's eye is on you! Get out and run for your life, for if you stay here till to-morrow, you will wake up and find yourself a dead goose!" "But where else can I go to?" asked the king's son. "Is there any place left for me?" The fox laughed, and winked, and whispered a word; and all at once the king's son got up and went. The queen had said to her messengers, "Go and look in the fox's hole; and you shall find him!" But the messengers came and dug up the burrow,[78] and found butter and eggs from the royal dairy, but of the king's son never a sign. [78] The king's son came to the palace, and as he crept through the gardens he found there his little brother alone at play,—playing sadly because now he was all alone. Then the king's son stopped and said, "Little brother, do you so
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