was safe and his broken leg quite well. When she reached the castle of the leopard-man he was on the steps to meet her and without waiting to enter the castle he took the golden root from her and tasted it. The leopard body disappeared and there he stood before her, a tall, handsome youth whom any maiden, even a princess, would fall in love with. The Princess told him her story and the Prince told her they would go at once to her father and he would ask for her hand, for he had already asked for her heart and found that it was his. The enchanted boat took them back to the[Pg 81] garden of the King, where they found that the Queen, when she knew that her son had lost the chance of becoming King when the Princess disappeared, had put the King in a dungeon under the palace and she and her son had become the rulers of the kingdom. [Pg 81] The Prince quickly undid all this mischief by setting the King free, and when he found out how treacherous his Queen really was he sent her, with her son, away from the palace and told them never to return or they would both be put in prison. He was a kind-hearted King and gave them gold to care for them the rest of their days, and it did not take them long to leave the palace, you may be sure, for already the wedding feast was being made ready for the marriage of the Princess and her Prince. The enchanted boat now was not needed, and that with the lake disappeared, but when the Princess set out with her husband to go to the castle she found that it was within her father’s kingdom that the Prince had lived. At the end of the castle garden where the Prince and the Princess live is a long stone seat, and at one end grows a bush of golden[Pg 82] flowers, the like of which no one ever saw before, and at the other is the figure of a big eagle made of gold and bronze, but only the Princess and her husband know what these things mean. [Pg 82] [Pg 83] [Pg 83]
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