The Prince left the young thief outside, with old Master Miserlix to guard him.
“What you do is shamefully wrong!” cried the thief. “Why have you trussed up our hands as though we were criminals, instead of giving this whippersnapper a good thrashing with the cane for trying to harm honest and peaceful citizens?”
“We shall see about that later,” said the Prince. “Now tell me your name.”
Suddenly the thief recognized the Prince’s face and breathed a sigh of relief. What might he have to fear from a young greenhorn like him?
“Lor’ bless us!” he said delightedly. “It’s you, isn’t it, my lad, you came a day or so ago and knocked at my door? And how is the young girl who was with you then? Would she be your sister, perchance?”
“That too shall be left for later. Now tell me your name.”
“Scallywag is my name. But I don’t see why you ask me the questions that you should be asking that wastrel who tried to damage our property…”
“I shall ask him too, later. Now tell me why you were trying to take hold of the loaded handcart?”
“Oh, but this is not the way things are, my good lad,” said the man, with a foxy smile. “Please allow me to tell you how it all happened. I had been working in the woods, digging and taking out… those things, what d’ya call ’em… them stones. And my boy was there too, helping me. So then, once I had filled my cart, I told my boy to take it home…”
“What did you want the stones for?” asked the Prince.
“To build a chicken coop, bless your heart, because my old one has fallen to ruin. Well then, I heard screams, I went outside, and saw this boy here, who was set upon stealing the stones from my son, and I threw him on the ground to save my own. There, my good lad, that’s how the story goes, bless you, my boy. Do now untie my hands, for they have gone numb and blue bound up like this.”
“Stay there for now, we have someone else to hear before we can untie you,” said the Prince.
And he called now old Master Miserlix, who had been polishing a sword while guarding the thief boy, so as not to waste time.
“Bring him in, old man,” he said.
“What is your name and what happened?” he asked the boy.
“My name is Mitsos,” replied the boy, trembling and secretly making a sign to his father that he had no idea what to say.
The Prince caught sight of the sign, and forced Scallywag to turn his back to the boy.
“Tell them, my boy, weren’t you going to…” began the thief.
“You will keep silent, or I shall have you gagged!” shouted the Prince.
“Oh, but my good lad, I only want my boy to tell the truth, so you can believe that he was going—”
Yet, before he could speak another word, Miserlix had muzzled his mouth with a rag.
“Yes,” said Mitsos, thinking that he had understood his father’s meaning, “I was going to help the boy pull the loaded handcar—”
With a thump of his foot his father stopped him short.
“I mean I was going to take the stones to town to sell them to the master blacksm—”
Another thump of the foot, and the boy completely lost his wits, bursting into tears.
“Enough!” said the Prince.
And he called in the boy from the mine:
“Tell us what happened, Thanos?”
“I was returning from the mineshafts, with the ore stones,” said Thanos, “and this one came out of the woods and grabbed hold of the handcart. I shouted to him that this was another man’s property, when the older one came too, threw me to the ground, and he would have taken the handcart from me if you had not arrived at the scene.”
“Did you hear that, Master Scallywag?” said the Prince. “You did not know of course that the handcart belonged to us, and that this boy works in our workshop, or else you would have conjured up some other story to tell us. And you, Mitsos,” he continued, turning to the thief boy, “now that you have had the good fortune to cross paths with Master Miserlix again, won’t you return to him the watch that you have been keeping for some days now in your breast pocket?”
Everyone was confounded by the Prince’s words. Scallywag alone understood; his knees then failed him, and he collapsed on a chair.
The Prince took the watch and its chain from the thief’s pocket, and returned them to Miserlix.
“My watch!” exclaimed the blacksmith with delight. “How did it come to be in this boy’s pocket?”
In a few words, the Prince recounted all that he had heard and seen from behind the loose pile of rubble at the back of the thief’s house.
“And now,” he said, “forwards! March!”
He led them, arms tied behind their backs, to prison, and found the jailor chatting at the door with a young man.
With displeasure the Prince recognized the drunken youth with the wine-glazed eyes, who had uttered such insults against the King in the tavern.
He too recognized him, and asked sarcastically: “Hey there, countryman! So then, has the King’s son come out yet?”
The Prince did not answer. He asked for the keys and the jailor handed them to him, bowing all the way to the ground.
He crossed the square to the other side where the prison cells stood, opened the door, and locked the thieves in.
The youth and the jailor stared at him as he went.
“Tell me one thing, why did you bow so deeply when you handed him the keys?” asked the youth. “Who is he?”
“I don’t know,” replied the jailor. “Only he made Master Faintheart take Miserlix out of prison, when it had been Faintheart himself who had sentenced him.”
“My, you don’t say!” said the youth.
And he went on contemptuously:
“He must be some palace lackey or other… Same as the rest of them…”
“Not at all!” said the jailor. “It was a palace man who asked for Miserlix’s jail sentence. Master Faintheart who sentenced an innocent man had sold himself heart and soul to the palace men. He, though!.. You should have seen him! He was driving Master Faintheart with a whip, and he forced him to take the innocent man out of prison.”
“With a what, did you say?”
“With a whip!” repeated the jailor.
The Prince locked the prison door, brought back the keys and turned to go.
“Who can he be?” muttered the youth.
And from a distance, he followed him.
Going past the house of Illstar the master builder, the Prince decided to go up and ask him whether he had set himself down to work yet.
“The master builder is not upstairs,” shouted the cobbler, who had his workshop around the corner. “He is down by the river.”
“This is good!” the Prince thought joyfully to himself. “So, he has already started work then!”
He turned towards the river, but as he was passing the woods he heard voices.
He entered the woods, and amongst the trees he saw some youths who were struggling to pull an enormous log, all trussed up with ropes. But the log was heavy, and they could not make it yield an inch.
“Where do you wish to take this?” asked the Prince.
“To the river, where the foreman wants it,” they replied.
“It is impossible to drag it like this. It is too big.”
“And what are we to do? The foreman needs it. We shall be spitting blood by the end of it, but drag it we shall.”
“You will break your ropes, and still you shall have achieved nothing. We must find some other way. You need wheels…”
The lumbermen laughed.
“And that is just what we do not have!” they said.
The Prince took a few moments to think.
“Hand me your axe,” he said.
And removing his jerkin, the Prince fashioned three rollers. These they placed under the log. All three of them harnessed themselves with the ropes, and together they pulled. The log rolled forward, as though on wheels.