The boy found things as the fox said, but _begonies_ he chose the dancing and drinking, and there we'll leave him. In a week's time, when they got tired at home waiting for him, the second son said he'd try his fortune, and off he set. He was just as ill-natured and foolish as his brother, and the same thing happened to him. Well, when a week was over, away went the youngest of all, and as sure as the hearth-money, he sat under the same tree, and pulled out his bread and meat, and the same fox came up and saluted him. Well, the young fellow shared his dinner with the _moddhereen_, and he wasn't long beating about the bush, but told the other he knew all about his business. "I'll help you," says he, "if I find you're biddable. So just at nightfall you'll come into a village.... Good-bye till to-morrow." It was just as the fox said, but the boy took care not to go near dancer, drinker, fiddler, or piper. He got welcome in the quiet house to supper and bed, and was on his journey next morning before the sun was the height of the trees. He wasn't gone a quarter of a mile when he saw the fox coming out of a wood that was by the roadside. "Good-morrow, fox," says one. "Good-morrow, sir," says the other. "Have you any notion how far you have to travel till you find the golden bird?" "Dickens a notion have I;--how could I?" "Well, I have. She's in the King of Spain's palace, and that's a good two hundred miles off." "Oh, dear! we'll be a week going." "No, we won't. Sit down on my tail, and we'll soon make the road short." "Tail, indeed! that 'ud be the droll saddle, my poor _moddhereen_." "Do as I tell you, or I'll leave you to yourself." Well, rather than vex him he sat down on the tail that was spread out level like a wing, and away they went like thought. They overtook the wind that was before them, and the wind that came after didn't overtake them. In the afternoon, they stopped in a wood near the King of Spain's palace, and there they stayed till nightfall. "Now," says the fox, "I'll go before you to make the minds of the guards easy, and you'll have nothing to do but go from lighted hall to another lighted hall till you find the golden bird in the last. If you have a head on you, you'll bring himself and his cage outside the door, and no one then can lay hands on him or you. If you haven't a head I can't help you, nor no one else." So he went over to the gates. In a quarter of an hour the boy followed, and in the first hall he passed he saw a score of armed guards standing upright, but all dead asleep. In the next he saw a dozen, and in the next half a dozen, and in the next three, and in the room beyond that there was no guard at all, nor lamp, nor candle, but it was as bright as day; for there was the golden bird in a common wood and wire cage, and on the table were the three apples turned into solid gold.