the first, mixing gold thread and precious stones till you could hardly see the red of the stuff. When it was done she glided into her tree just as the prince came in.
‘You are as quick as you are clever,’ said he, admiringly. ‘This looks as if it had been embroidered by the fairies! But as the green robe must outshine the other two I will give you three days in which to finish it. After it is ready we will be married at once.’
Now, as he spoke, there rose up in Laufer’s mind all the unkind things that she and her mother had done to Lineik. Could she hope that they would be forgotten, and that Lineik would come to her rescue for the third time? And perhaps Lineik, who had not forgotten the past either, might have left her alone, to get on as best she could, had not Sigurd, her brother, implored her to help just once more. So Lineik again slid out of her tree, and, to Laufer’s great relief, set herself to work. When the shining green silk was ready she caught the sun’s rays and the moon’s beams on the point of her needle and wove them into a pattern such as no man had ever seen. But it took a long time, and on the third morning, just as she was putting the last stitches into the last flower the prince came in.
Lineik jumped up quickly, and tried to get past him back to her tree; but the folds of the silk were wrapped round her, and she would have fallen had not the prince caught her.
‘I have thought for some time that all was not quite straight here,’ said he. ‘Tell me who you are, and where you come from?’
Lineik then told her name and her story. When she had ended the prince turned angrily to Laufer, and declared that, as a punishment for her wicked lies, she deserved to die a shameful death.
But Laufer fell at his feet and begged for mercy. It was her mother’s fault, she said: ‘It was she, and not I, who passed me off as the Princess Lineik. The only lie
