Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/214

192 "Oh! pray don't," said the rat, "and I'll get you the ring again."

"If so, be quick about it," said the cat, "or"

So after they had taken up their abode in the palace, the rat ran about poking his nose into everything, trying to get into the prince and princess's bedroom. At last he found a little hole and crept through it. Then he heard how they lay awake talking, and the rat could tell that the prince had the ring on his finger, for the princess said, "Mind you take great care of my ring, dear." That was what she said; but what the prince said was—

"Pooh! no one will come in hither after the ring through stone and mortar; but, for all that, if you think it isn't safe on my finger, I can just as well put it into my mouth."

In a little while the prince turned over on his back, and tried to go to sleep, and as he did so the ring was just slipping down into his throat, and then he coughed it up, so that it shot out of his mouth and rolled away over the floor. Pop! up the rat snapped it and crept off with it to the cat who sat outside watching at the rat-hole.

All this while the king had laid hands on the lad and put him into a strong tower and doomed him to lose his life, for that he had made jeers and gibes at him and his daughter, and there he was to stay till the day of his death. Now, as the cat was hard at work prowling about trying to steal into the tower with the ring to the lad, a great eagle came flying and pounced down on her and caught her up in his claws and flew away with her over the sea. But just in the nick of