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‘What was that noise?’ she said.

‘It was nothing,’ replied her eldest sister; ‘it was only the screech of the barn-owl that roosts in one of the turrets of the castle.’

While she was speaking Michael managed to slip in front, and running up the staircase, he reached the princesses’ room first. He flung open the window, and sliding down the vine which climbed up the wall, found himself in the garden just as the sun was beginning to rise, and it was time for him to set to his work.

X

That day, when he made up the bouquets, Michael hid the branch with the silver drops in the nosegay intended for the youngest Princess.

When Lina discovered it she was much surprised. However, she said nothing to her sisters, but as she met the boy by accident while she was walking under the shade of the elms, she suddenly stopped as if to speak to him; then, altering her mind, went on her way.

The same evening the twelve sisters went again to the ball, and the Star Gazer again followed them and crossed the lake in Lina’s boat. This time it was the Prince who complained that the boat seemed very heavy.

‘It is the heat,’ replied the Princess. ‘I, too, have been feeling very warm.’

During the ball she looked everywhere for the gardener’s boy, but she never saw him.

As they came back, Michael gathered a branch from the wood with the gold-spangled leaves, and now it was the eldest Princess who heard the noise that it made in breaking.

‘It is nothing,’ said Lina; ‘only the cry of the owl which roosts in the turrets of the castle.’

XI

As soon as she got up she found the branch in her bouquet. When the sisters went down she stayed a little behind and said to the cow-boy: ‘Where does this branch come from?’

‘Your Royal Highness knows well enough,’ answered Michael.

‘So you have followed us?’

‘Yes, Princess.’

‘How did you manage it? we never saw you.’

‘I hid myself,’ replied the Star Gazer quietly.

The Princess was silent a moment, and then said:

‘You know our secret!–keep it. Here is the reward of your discretion.’ And she flung the boy a purse of gold.

‘I do not sell my silence,’ answered Michael, and he went away without picking up the purse.

For three nights Lina neither saw nor heard anything extraordinary; on the fourth she heard a rustling among the diamond- spangled leaves of the wood. That day there was a branch of the trees in her bouquet.

She took the Star Gazer aside, and said to him in a harsh voice:

‘You know what price my father has promised to pay for our secret?’

‘I know, Princess,’ answered Michael.

‘Don’t you mean to tell him?’

‘That is not my intention.’

‘Are you afraid?’

‘No, Princess.’

‘What makes you so discreet, then?’

But Michael was silent.

XII

Lina’s sisters had seen her talking to the little garden boy, and jeered at her for it.

‘What prevents your marrying him?’ asked the eldest, ‘you would become a gardener too; it is a charming profession. You could live in a cottage at the end of the park, and help your husband to draw up water from the well, and when we get up you could bring us our bouquets.’

The Princess Lina was very angry, and when the Star Gazer presented her bouquet, she received it in a disdainful manner.

Michael behaved most respectfully. He never raised his eyes to her, but nearly all day she felt him at her side without ever seeing him.

One day she made up her mind to tell everything to her eldest sister.

‘What!’ said she, ‘this rogue knows our secret, and you never told me! I must lose no time in getting rid of him.’

‘But how?’

‘Why, by having him taken to the tower with the dungeons, of course.’

For this was the way that in old times beautiful princesses got rid of people who knew too much.

But the astonishing part of it was that the youngest sister did not seem at all to relish this method of stopping the mouth of the gardener’s boy, who, after all, had said nothing to their father.