In fact, he was afraid that someone might sit down on it, and wish he was somewhere else, and be carried away, as was the nature of the carpet. King Prigio was not absent a minute, for he met William on the stairs; but when he came back, there was not one single person in the turret-room! "Where on earth are they?" cried the king, rushing through all the rooms in that part of the castle. He shouted for them, and looked everywhere; but there was not a trace of tailor, hatter, optician, swordmaker, upholsterer. The king hastened to a window over the gate, and saw the sentinels on duty. "Hi!" he called. And the sentinels turned round, looked up, and saluted. "Have you seen anyone go out?" he cried. "No one, sire," answered the soldiers. The king, who began to guess what had happened, hurried back to the turret-room. There were all the tradesmen with parcels under their arms. "What means this, gentlemen?" said his Majesty, severely. "For what reason did you leave the room without my permission?" They all knelt down, humbly imploring his compassion. "Get up, you donkeys!" said the king, forgetting his politeness. "Get up, and tell me where you have been hiding yourselves." The hatter came forward, and said: "Sire, you will not believe me; indeed, I can scarcely believe it myself!" "Nor none of us can't," said the swordmaker. "We have been home, and brought the articles. All orders executed with punctuality and dispatch," he added, quoting his own advertisement without thinking of it. On this the swordmaker took out and exhibited the Andrea Ferrara blade, which was exactly like the Sword of Sharpness. The upholsterer undid his parcel, and there was a Persian rug, which no one could tell from the magical carpet. The hatter was fumbling with the string of his parcel, when he suddenly remembered, what the king in his astonishment had not noticed, that he had a cap on himself. He pulled it off in a hurry, and the king at once saw that it was his Wishing Cap, and understood all about the affair. The hatter, in his absence, had tried on the Wishing Cap, and had wished that he himself and his friends were all at home and back again with their wares at the palace. And what he wished happened, of course, as was natural. In a moment the king saw how much talk this business would produce in the country, and he decided on the best way to stop it. Seizing the Wishing Cap, he put it on, wished all the tradesmen, including the shoemaker, back in the town at their shops, and also wished that none of them should remember anything about the whole affair. In a moment he was alone in the turret-room. As for the shopkeepers, they had a kind of idea that they had dreamed something odd; but, as it went no further, of course they did not talk about it, and nobody was any the wiser.