The Widow's Son. 222 house. It stood on posts, and a high staircase led up to it ; under this he put some moss for a bed, and there he lay as well as he could. When he had been some time at the palace, it happened one morning, just vasuas the sun was rising, that the lad had tåken off his wig of moss and was washing himselfj he then looked so handsome that it was a pleasure to look at him. -** -« aj The princess saw the lad from her window, and she thought that she never had seen any one so handsome. She asked the gardener why the lad slept out there under the steps. " Oh, none of his fellow-servants will sleep with him," said the gardener. w Let him come up and lic outside the door of my chamber," said the prin cess, * and then I suppose they will not think themselves too good to sleep in the same room as he." The gardener told the lad of it. "Do you think I*ll do that ?" said the lad; "they would say that I was running after the princess." — " Yes, you are very likely to be suspected of that," said the gardener, " you are so good-looking ! "—" Well, if she orders it so, I suppose I must go," said the lad. When he was going up stairs in the evening he tramped and stamped so terribly that they had to tell him to walk more softly, that the king should not get to know it. So he lay down by the door and began to snore. The princess then said to her maid : "Just go quietly to him and pull off his wig." The maid was just going to snatch it off his head, when he took hold of it with both his hands and said that she should not have it ; and with that he lay down again and began snoring. The princess gave the maid a sign again, and that time she snatched the wig off him, and there lay the lad so lovely and red and white, just as the princess had seen him in the morning sun. After that the lad slept every night outside the princess's chamber. But before long the king got to hear that the gardener's boy lay outside the princess's chamber every night, and he was so enraged at this that he almost took the lad's life. He did not do this, however, but threw him into the prison tower. He shut up his
