“It is I,” said he, “and I am King of the Wind, and ten times greater than the greatest of kings here below. One day I saw you walking in your garden and fell in love with you, and now I have come to ask you if you will marry me and be my wife?” “But how can I marry you?” said the princess, “without seeing you?” “You shall see me,” said the soldier, “all in good time. Three days from now I will come again, and will show myself to you, but just now it cannot be. But if I come, will you marry me?” “Yes I will,” said the princess, “for I like the way you talk--that I do!” Thereupon the soldier kissed her and said good-bye, and then stepped out of the window as he had stepped in. He sat him down upon his three-legged stool. “I wish,” said he, “to be carried to such and such a tavern.” For he had been in that town before, and knew the places where good living was to be had. Whir! whiz! away flew the stool as high and higher than it had flown before, and then down it came again, and down and down until it lit as light as a feather in the street before the tavern door. The soldier tucked his feather cap in his pocket, and the three-legged stool under his arm, and in he went and ordered a pot of beer and some white bread and cheese. Meantime, at the king’s palace was such a gossiping and such a hubbub as had not been heard there for many a day; for the pretty princess was not slow in telling how the invisible King of the Wind had come and asked her to marry him; and some said it was true and some said it was not true, and everybody wondered and talked, and told their own notions of the matter. But all agreed that three days would show whether what had been told was true or no. As for the soldier, he knew no more how to do what he had promised to do than my grandmother’s cat; for where was he to get clothes fine enough for the King of the Wind to wear? So there he sat on his three-legged stool thinking and thinking, and if he had known all that I know he would not have given two turns of his wit upon it. “I wish,” says he, at last--“I wish that this stool could help me now as well as it can carry me through the sky. I wish,” says he, “that I had a suit of clothes such as the King of the Wind might really wear.” The wonders of the three-legged stool were wonders indeed! Hardly had the words left the soldier’s lips when down came something tumbling about his ears from up in the air; and what should it be but just such a suit of clothes as he had in his mind--all crusted over with gold and silver and jewels. “Well,” says the soldier, as soon as he had got over his wonder again, “I would rather sit upon this stool than any I ever saw.” And so would I, if I had been in his place, and had a few minutes to think of all that I wanted.