[Illustration: The Princess began to pluck and gather as fast as she
could]
So she went on a long, long time picking down on the witches' moor,
carding and spinning, and all the while keeping the house of the
Princes, cooking, and making their beds. But she never talked, nor
laughed, nor wept.
At evening home the brothers came, flapping and whirring like wild
ducks, and all night they were Princes, but in the morning off they flew
again, and were wild ducks the whole day.
But, it happened one night when she was out on the moor picking
thistledown, that the young King who ruled that land was out hunting,
and had lost his way. He had become separated from his companions, and
now, as he came riding across the moor, he saw her. He stopped and
wondered who the lovely lady could be that walked alone on the moor
picking thistledown in the dead of the night; and he asked her name.
Getting no answer, he was still more astonished, but he liked her so
much, that at last nothing would do but he must take her home to his
castle and marry her. So he took her and put her upon his horse. The
Princess wrung her hands, and made signs to him, and pointed to the bags
in which her work was, and when the King saw she wished to have them
with her he took the bags and placed them behind them.
When that was done the Princess, little by little, came to herself, for
the King was both a wise man and a handsome man, and he was as gentle
and kind to her as a mother.
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