Page:The folk-tales of the Magyars.djvu/263

 Rh from the bed while asleep; the child again told his mother of it, and she said, "Place it back, my son, put it back, it's your father's leg." The boy did as he was told, but the prince knew nothing of it. It happened, however, that the prince's faithful servant was awake and heard every word the woman said to the child, and told the story to his master the next day. The prince was astonished, and no longer doubted that the woman was his wife, no matter how she had recovered her hands. So the next day he again went out hunting, and, according to arrangement, stayed late in the wood and had to return to the cottage again. The prince, having gone to bed, feigned sleep, and dropped his arm over the bed; his wife, seeing this, again said, "Put it back, my son, put it back, it's your royal father's arm." Afterwards he dropped his other arm, and then his two legs purposely; and the woman in each case bade her son put them back, in the same words. At last he let his head hang over the bedside, and his wife said to her son, "Lift it back, my son, lift it back; it's your royal father's head." But the little fellow, getting tired of all this, replied, "I shan't do it; you better do it yourself this time, mother." "Lift it back, my son," again said the mother, coaxingly; but the boy would not obey, whereupon the woman herself went to the bed, in order to lift the prince's head. But no sooner had she touched him than her husband caught hold of her with both his hands, and embraced her. "Why did you leave me?" said he, in a reproachful tone. "How could I help leaving you," answered his wife, "when you ordered me out of your house?" "I wrote in the letter," said the prince, "this and this;" and told her what he had really written; and his wife explained to him what had been read to her from the letter that had been changed. The fraud was thus discovered, and the prince was glad beyond everything that he had found his wife and her two beautiful children.

He at once had all three taken back to the palace, where a