‘Oh, prince, I will repay your deed of mercy,’ cried the stork.
‘You poor stork! how can you repay me?’ asked the prince.
‘You have forgotten,’ answered the stork, ‘the proverb that runs, “mountain and mountain can never meet, but one living creature can always come across another.”’
The boy laughed at hearing these words again, and walked slowly on. He had not gone far, when he fell in with two discharged soldiers.
‘Where are you going, little brother?’ asked one.
‘I am seeking work,’ answered the prince.
‘So are we,’ replied the soldier. ‘We can all go together.’
The boy was glad of company and they went on, and on, and on, through seven kingdoms, without finding anything they were able to do. At length they reached a palace, and there was the king standing on the steps.
‘You seem to be looking for something,’ said he.
‘It is work we want,’ they all answered.
So the king told the soldiers that they might become his coachmen; but he made the boy his companion, and gave him rooms near his own. The soldiers were dreadfully angry when they heard this, for of course they did not know that the boy was really a prince; and they soon began to lay their heads together to plot his ruin.
Then they went to the king.
‘Your Majesty,’ they said, ‘we think it our duty to tell you that your new companion has boasted to us that if he were only your steward he would not lose a single grain of corn out of the storehouses. Now, if your Majesty would give orders that a sack of wheat should be mixed with one of barley, and would send for the youth, and command him to separate the grains one from another, in two hours’ time, you would soon see what his talk was worth.’
