"I agree."
So they made them a compact, and the deeds were drawn out and signed and sealed.
Then the daughter of the Emperor met him next day, and it was arranged that he should hide himself as best he could. But now he was in an agony that tortured him worse than death, for he bethought him again and again where and how he could best hide himself, for nothing less than his head was at stake. And as he kept walking about, and brooding and pondering, he remembered the pike. Then he took out the fish's scale, looked at it, and thought of the fish's master, and immediately, oh wonderful!—the pike stood before him and said: "What dost thou want of me, Boy-Beautiful?"
"What do I want? Thou mayest well ask that! Look what has happened to me! Canst thou not tell me what to do?"
"That is thy business no longer. Leave it to me!"
And immediately striking Aleodor with his tail, he turned him into a little shell-fish, and hid him among the other little shell-fish at the bottom of the sea.
When the damsel appeared, she put on her eye-glass and looked for him in every direction, but could see him nowhere. Her other wooers had hidden
