Twilight Land | Page 6

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.
So he found out the trick of the stool, and after that wishing and having
were easy enough, and by the time the three days were ended the real
King of the Wind himself could not have cut a finer figure. Then down
sat the soldier upon his stool, and wished himself at the king's palace.
Away he flew through the air, and by-and-by there he was, just where
he had been before. He put his feather cap upon his head, and stepped
in through the window, and there he found the princess with her father,
the king, and her mother, the queen, and all the great lords and nobles
waiting for his coming; but never a stitch nor a hair did they see of him
until he stood in the very midst of them all. Then he whipped the
feather cap off of his head, and there he was, shining with silver and
gold and glistening with jewels--such a sight as man's eyes never saw
before.
"Take her," said the king, "she is yours." And the soldier looked so
handsome in his fine clothes that the princess was as glad to hear those
words as any she had ever listened to in all of her life.
"You shall," said the king, "be married to-morrow."
"Very well," said the soldier. "Only give me a plot of ground to build a
palace upon that shall be fit for the wife of the