“Come,” said the second fisherman, “he is dead, whoever he is. His fine clothes and his purse of money can do him no good now, and we might as well have them as anybody else.” So between them both they stripped the beggar of all that the king had given him, and left him lying on the beach. At daybreak the beggar awoke from his swoon, and there he found himself lying without a stitch to his back, and half dead with the cold and the water he had swallowed. Then, fearing lest somebody might see him, he crawled away into the rushes that grew beside the river, there to hide himself until night should come again. But as he went, crawling upon hands and knees, he suddenly came upon a bundle that had been washed up by the water, and when he laid eyes upon it his heart leaped within him, for what should that bundle be but the patches and tatters which he had worn the day before, and which the attendants had thrown over the garden wall and into the river when they had dressed him in the fine clothes the king gave him. He spread his clothes out in the sun until they were dry, and then he put them on and went back into the town again. * * * * * “Well,” said the king, that morning, to his chief councillor, “what do you think now? Am I not greater than Fate? Did I not make the beggar rich? and shall I not paint my father’s words out from the wall, and put my own there instead?” “I do not know,” said the councillor, shaking his head. “Let us first see what has become of the beggar.” “So be it,” said the king; and he and the councillor set off to see whether the beggar had done as he ought to do with the good things that the king had given him. So they came to the town-gate, and there, lo and behold! the first thing that they saw was the beggar with his wooden bowl in his hand asking those who passed by for a stray penny or two. When the king saw him he turned without a word, and rode back home again. “Very well,” said he to the chief councillor, “I have tried to make the beggar rich and have failed; nevertheless, if I cannot make him I can ruin him in spite of Fate, and that I will show you.” So all that while the beggar sat at the town-gate and begged until came noontide, when who should he see coming but the same three men who had come for him the day before. “Ah, ha!” said he to himself, “now the king is going to give me some more good things.” And so when the three reached him he was willing enough to go with them, rough as they were.