king sent me off penniless, and left me to hunger and want: I have a mind to show him that it is my turn to be master now; so bring me his daughter here this evening, that she may wait upon me." "That is rather a dangerous task," said little humpty. But away he went, took the princess out of her bed, fast asleep as she was, and brought her to the soldier.
Very early in the morning he carried her back; and as soon as she saw her father she said, "I had a strange dream last night: I thought I was carried away through the air to an old soldier's house, and was forced to wait upon him there." Then the king wondered greatly at such a story; but told her to make a hole in her pocket, and fill it with peas; so that if it were really as she said, and the whole was not a dream, the peas might fall out in the streets as she passed through, and thus leave a clue to tell whither she had been taken. She did so: but the dwarf had heard the king's plot; and when evening came, and the soldier said he must bring him the princess again, he strewed peas over many other streets, so that the few that fell from her pocket were not known from the others: and all that happened was, that the pigeons had a fine feast, and the people of the town were busy all the next day picking up peas, and wondering where so many could come from.
When the princess told her father what had happened to her the second time, he said, "Take one of your shoes with you, and hide it in the room you are taken to." The dwarf, however, was by his side and heard this also; and when Kurt told him to bring the king's daughter again, he said, "I have no power to save you a second time; it will be an unlucky thing for you if are found out, as I think you will." But the old soldier, like some other
