_Head-piece—King Stork_ 293 _The Drummer helps the Old Man_ 295 _The Princess comes forth from the Castle at Night_ 297 _The Drummer helps himself_ 299 _The Drummer catches the One-eyed Raven_ 303 _TWELVE O’CLOCK_ 305 _Head-piece—The Best that Life has to Give_ 307 _The Blacksmith steals the Dwarf’s Pine-cones_ 309 _The Blacksmith chooses the Raven_ 311 _The Blacksmith brings the Little Bird to the Queen_ 315 _The Young Blacksmith Forges the Ring_ 317 [Illustration] [Illustration] One O’clock· One of the _Clock_, and silence deep [Sidenote: ☾] Then up the _Stairway_, black and steep The old _House-Cat_ comes creepy-creep With soft feet goes from room to room Her green eyes shining through the gloom, And finds all fast asleep. [Sidenote: ○] K.P. [Illustration: Bearskin.] I. There was a king travelling through the country, and he and those with him were so far away from home that darkness caught them by the heels, and they had to stop at a stone mill for the night, because there was no other place handy. While they sat at supper, they heard a sound in the next room, and it was a baby crying. The miller stood in the corner, back of the stove, with his hat in his hand. “What is that noise?” said the king to him. “Oh! it is nothing but another baby that the good storks have brought into the house to-day,” said the miller. Now there was a wise man travelling along with the king, who could read the stars and everything that they told as easily as one can read one’s A B C’s in a book after one knows them, and the king, for a bit of a jest, would have him find out what the stars had to foretell of the miller’s baby. So the wise man went out and took a peep up in the sky, and by and by he came in again. “Well,” said the king, “and what did the stars tell you?” “The stars tell me,” said the wise man, “that you shall have a daughter, and that the miller’s baby, in the room yonder, shall marry her when they are old enough to think of such things.” “What!” said the king, “and is a miller’s baby to marry the princess that is to come! We will see about that.” So the next day he took the miller aside and talked and bargained, and bargained and talked, until the upshot of the matter was that the miller was paid two hundred dollars, and the king rode off with the baby.