sitting with a halo of light around her and with the pearls in her lap, he stood stock-*still with amazement. Then he began to count the pearls, and every single one was there, all three hundred and sixty-five, even to the little crooked one! But the silken cord on which they had been strung was missing.
Away went the king hobbling up the stairs to his own apartments to fetch a new silken cord. He was afraid to ask anyone else to go for it because he feared they would steal something.
When the king had snipped off his cord he hurried back so quickly down to the prison again, that he tripped over his own feet and fell and broke his neck, and there he lay dead on his way down to the dungeons where he had let so many innocent people suffer and pine to death.
The king was buried, and the queen was proclaimed the only reigning sovereign in all the land.
And never was there a gentler queen than she. If any one was in any trouble or distress they simply said:
"We shall go to the queen, there is sure
