The Islands of Magic Part 16

she said. "I made an appointment to see the princess to-morrow. I am going to the palace at four o'clock to sell pretty things to her."

"Well done, good mother!" cried the prince, again thrusting his hand into his purse. "Let me go in your place!"

The old woman gladly consented, and the prince dressed himself as a peddler. The next afternoon at four o'clock he went to the palace of the king of Naples.

"It is a peddler with many interesting wares for sale," said the servant who answered his knock. "He speaks of an appointment with your Royal Highness."

"Yes," said the princess. "A peddler was to come to-day at four o'clock with pretty things for me to buy."

Accordingly, the prince was admitted to the presence of the daughter of the king of Naples. If she were surprised to find the peddler a handsome young man instead of the old woman with whom she had talked the day before she did not show it.

"What lovely things you have!" she cried as she examined the tray full of ribbons and beads and trinkets.

She selected a number of the wares and then she asked, "What is the price of these?"

The prince would not set a price.

"If your Royal Highness is pleased with these," said he, "I have many more things at home which you will like even better. I'll bring them to you to-morrow."

"That will be splendid!" cried the princess. "Come again to-morrow at this hour."

The next day the prince again dressed himself as a peddler, but underneath the outer garments he wore his own rich clothing. When he was admitted to the royal palace he laid aside his peddler's disguise and stood before the princess looking like the true prince he was. He was very handsome in his rich suit of crimson velvet, with his hat with the long plume in his hand. The princess was so surprised that she turned pale.

"Who are you?" she cried. "You surely are not the peddler who came here yesterday!"

The prince smiled into her eyes, and, even without the peddler's garments which were rolled up on the tray, she would have recognized him.

He told her of the quest which had led him there, and she admired all the patience and diligence he had shown in finding out her existence.

When he asked her to marry him at once, she readily consented. They planned that she should steal down the staircase at night and go away with him on his ship.

All this sounded very romantic to the daughter of the king of Naples.

She had never dreamed that a thing like this would ever happen. All her life she had been so closely guarded that stealing out of the palace and sailing away in the prince's ship seemed the most wonderful thing in the world.

The next night had been agreed on, and long ahead of the appointed hour the prince sat on horseback at the foot of the stairway down which the princess would steal. He was very weary with all the excitement of the past three days, and as he waited he fell asleep. A robber pa.s.sed by and saw his sleeping form hanging limply on the saddle.

"I'll gently deposit him on the ground and get away with his horse and saddle," thought the thief, as he stopped and regarded the horse with a critical eye.

Just then, however, he saw something which made him change his mind about hurrying away after he had deposited the prince's sleeping form beneath a tree. There was the loveliest maiden he had ever seen creeping silently down the stairway. She came straight up to him.

"I'm ready, beloved," were her words.

The robber silently lifted her behind him on the horse's back and together they rode away.

"Where is your boat?" asked the princess after they had ridden together for some time without speaking.

"So it is a boat which the fair lady is looking for," thought the thief. "I was expecting this good horse to carry us the whole distance. A boat is a bit difficult to arrange, but it can be done if necessary. There ought to be a boat around somewhere for me to steal."

He left the daughter of the king of Naples on the sh.o.r.e while he went to steal a boat. When he returned the light shone upon his face and the girl thought that he did not look the same as the day before.

"Of course, I've seen him only twice," she told herself in an effort to gain a.s.surance. "It must be the prince, my own true love."

"Here is our boat," said the robber, and together they embarked.

As the morning light shone upon the robber the princess saw that he was not in the least like the prince who had come a-peddling. The robber laughed.

"Does my lady know with whom she is going away?" he asked.

"I thought I was going with the prince who is my lover," she replied, bursting into bitter tears.

Running away was not half so romantic and delightful as she had pictured it. She heartily wished that she were back in the royal palace.

As for the prince, he soon awoke and looked about the palace garden where he was lying under the tree.

"How did I get here?" he asked as he rubbed his eyes sleepily.

There was none to tell him, so he decided that his horse must have thrown him off and run away.

"It is queer that my fall did not awaken me," he said to himself. "It is a bit awkward to lose my horse. However, if the princess only keeps her promise and comes to me we shall manage to get to our ship somehow."

He waited very patiently for a time and then he began to fear that the princess had repented of her promise to run away. He did not give her up, however, until it was almost daylight. Then he sorrowfully returned to his waiting ship.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Then he sorrowfully returned to his waiting ship]

"I have at least found out that the king of Naples has a daughter and that she is the most beautiful princess in the whole world," he said.

"If she prefers not to have a run-away marriage it will doubtless be better for me to sail home and tell my father to make arrangements with the king of Naples for our wedding. There are some advantages in this more dignified method."

Thus it happened that the prince sailed away for his own country, never dreaming that the princess had kept her promise to steal down the stairway in the night and that she was then in the hands of the wicked robber.

The daughter of the king of Naples sobbed and cried so loud when she found that it was not her own prince with whom she was sailing that the robber became quite disgusted with her.

"I thought you were a pretty little maid," he said, "when I first saw you, but now I've changed my mind about you."

Indeed no person with good eyesight would have called the princess pretty at that moment, with her face all red and swollen with much weeping.

The robber decided that he did not want to bother with her any longer, so he landed in the country of the Junqueiras and left her there. The princess wandered about the place until night came without seeing a single soul,--nothing but the sea, sky and rocks.

She was really, however, not far from the hut in which there lived the wife and daughter of a poor fisherman. In the stillness of the night they heard a cry.

"Some one is in trouble outside, mother," said the daughter.

"Perhaps the pirates have come and by this cry are trying to lure us out," answered her mother cautiously. There were often pirate ships which stopped there. The daughter listened carefully.

"No, mother," she insisted. "I'm sure this is a girl's cry."

The two women opened their door and crept out in the darkness. The sobs of the princess soon led them to the place upon the rocks where she lay crying as if her heart would break. They lifted her tenderly and carried her home.

The fisherman's daughter gave the princess some of her own clothes to wear and they lived together as if they were sisters. Together they did all the work of the little house and the princess was too busy to weep. Sometimes, however, she cried in the night when the fisherman's wife and daughter were asleep. She wept for her lost love and for the royal palace of the king of Naples which had always been her home.