Page:Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1888).djvu/347

 large tree loaded with wild apples stretched itself over the roof, which was covered with roses, as if it would pour a blessing upon it. The long branches drooped just over the gable, and to the end of one hung a little bell. Could this be the bell they had heard? They all with one voice agreed that it must be, excepting one, who said, “that this bell was too small to be heard at such a distance, and had a very different sound to the one that touched men’s hearts so deeply.” He who spoke thus was a king’s son, and the others said that persons of that sort always wanted to be thought wiser than anyone else. Therefore, they allowed him to go on alone, and the farther he went the more his mind was impressed with the solitude of the forest; but still he heard the little bell that had so pleased the others, and sometimes the wind carried towards him sounds from the confectioner’s tent, and he could hear his late companions singing over their tea.

But the deep tones of the bell became louder and stronger, sometimes as if an organ were playing in unison with them, and these sounds were at the left side, where the heart is placed. Something rustled in the bushes, and then a little boy stood before the king’s son; he wore wooden shoes, and his jacket was so small that the sleeves did not reach to his wrists. They knew each other; the boy was one of those who had been confirmed, but who could not accompany the rest because he had to return home with the coat and boots which the landlord’s son had lent him. He had done this, and had started again in his wooden shoes and his old clothes, for he had heard the bell sound so deeply and solemnly that he felt he must go on.

“We can go together,” said the king’s son.

But the poor newly confirmed boy in the wooden shoes was quite ashamed; he pulled down the short sleeves of his jacket, and said he feared he could not walk fast enough; besides, he remarked, the bell should be sought for on the right hand, for there the space was larger and more beautiful.

“Then we shall not meet again,” said the king’s son, nodding to the poor boy as he went into the deepest depths of the forest, where the brambles tore his poor, shabby clothes, and scratched his face, his hands, and his feet, till they bled.

The king’s son also had a few rough scratches, but the sun shone brightly on his path, and it is he whom we must follow, for he was an active youth. “I must and will find the bell,” said he, “though I have to go to the end of the world for it.”

Some ugly apes sat in the branches of the trees and grinned at him, showing all their teeth. “Shall we beat him?” said they; “Shall we thrash him? he is a king’s son.”

But he went on undaunted, deeper and still deeper into the forest, where the most wonderful flowers grew. White lilies like stars, with ruby-red stamens; tulips, as blue as the sky, sparkling as they were moved by the wind; apple-trees, on which the apples shone with coloured reflected light like soap-bubbles: only think how these flowers and trees must have gleamed in the sunshine! Through openings in the branches could be