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 kind to him.
“Oh! it is nothing but another baby that the good storks have brought into the house today,” 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 ABC’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 o the matter was that the miller was paid two hundred dollars, and the king rode off with the baby.
As soon as he came home to the castle he called his chief forester to him. “Here,” says he, “take this baby and do thus and so with it, and when you have killed it bring its heart to me, that I may know that you have really done as you have been told.”
So off marched the forester with the baby; but on his way he stopped at home, and there was his good wife working about the house.
“Well, Henry,” said she, “what do you do with the baby?”
“Oh!” said he, “I am just talking it off to the forest to do thus and so with it.”
“Come,” said she. “it would be a pity to harm the little innocent, and to have its blood on your hands. Yonder hangs the rabbit that you shot this morning, and its heart will please the king just as well as the other.”
Thus the wife talked, and the end of the business was that she and the man smeared a basket all over with pitch and set the baby adrift in it on the river, and the king was just as well satisfied with the rabbit’s heart as he would have been with the baby’s.
But the basket with the baby in it drifted on and on down the river, until it lodged at last among the high reeds that stood along the bank. By and by there came a great she-bear to the water to dink, and there she found it.
Now the huntsmen in the forest had robbed he she-bear of her cubs, so that her heart yearned over the little baby, and she carried it home with her to fill the place of her own young ones. There the baby throve until he grew to a great strong lad, and as he had fed upon nothing but bear’s milk for all that time, he was ten times stronger than the strongest man in the land.
One day, as he was walking through the forest, he came across a woodman chopping the trees into billets of wood, and that was the first time he had ever seen a body like himself. Back he went to the bear as fast as he could travel, and told her what he had seen. “That,” said the bear, “is the most wicked and most cruel of all the beasts.”
“Yes,” says the lad, “that may be so, all the same I love beasts like that as I love the food I eat, and I long for nothing so much as to go out into the wide world, where I may find others of the same kind.”
At this the bear saw very well how the geese flew, and that the lad would soon be flitting.
“See,” said she, “if you must go out into the wide world you must. But you will be wanting help before long; for the ways of the world are not peaceful and simple as they are here in the woods, and before you have lived there long you will have more needs than there are flies in summer. See, here is a little crooked horn, and when your wants grow many, just come to the forest and blow a blast on it, and I will not be too far away to help you.”
So off went the lad away from the forest, and all the coat he had upon his back was the skin of a bear dressed with the hair on it, and that was why folk called him “Bearskin.”
He trudged along the high-road, until he came to the king’s castle, and it was the same king who though he had put Bearskin safe out of the way years and years ago.
Now, the king’s swineherd was in want of a lad, and as there was nothing better to do in that town, Bearskin took the place and went every morning to help drive the pigs into the forest, where they might eat the acorns and grow fat.
One day there was a mighty stir throughout the town; folk crying, and making a great hubbub. “What is it all about?” says Bearskin to the swineherd.
What! and did he not know what the trouble was? Where had he been for all of his life, that he had heard nothing of what was going on in the world? Had he never heard of the great fiery dragon with three heads that had threatened to lay waste all of that land, unless the pretty princess were given up to him? this was the very day that the dragon was to come for her, and she was to be sent up on the hill back of the town; that was why all the folk were crying and making such a stir.
“So!” says Bearskin, “and is there never a lad in the whole country that is man enough to face the beast? Then I will go myself if nobody better is to be found.” And off he went, though the swineherd laughed and laughed, and thought it all a bit of a jest. By and by Bearskin came to the forest, and there he blew a blast upon the little crooked horn that the bear had given him.
Presently came the bear through the bushes, so fast that the little twigs flew behind her. “And what is it that you want?” said she.
“I should like,” said Bearskin, “to have a horse, a suit of gold and silver armor that nothing can pierce, and a sword that shall cut through iron and steel; for I would like to go up on the hill to fight the dragon and free the pretty princess at the king’s town over yonder.”
“Very well,” said the bear, “look back of the tree yonder, and you will find just what you want.”
Yes; sure enough, there they were back of the tree: a grand white horse that champed his bit and pawed the ground till the gravel flew, and a suit of gold and silver armor such as a king might wear. Bearskin put on the armor and mounted the horse, and off he rode to the high hill back of the town.
By and by came the princess and the steward of the castle, for it was he that was to bring her to the dragon. But the steward stayed at the bottom of the hill, for he was afraid, and the princess had to climb it alone, though she could hardly see the road before her for the tears that fell from her eyes. But when she reached the top of he hill she found instead of the dragon a fine tall fellow dressed all in gold and silver armor. And...