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Now was the critical time; for the poor clerk despaired of being able to deeeive her.
The young queen was turned of twenty years of age, not eounting the hundred years she had been asleep, though her skin was somewhat tough yet she was fair and beautiful; and how to find a beast in the yard so firm that he might kill and cook for to appease her eanine appetite, was what puzzled him greatly, and made him totally at a loss what to do.
He then took a resolution that he must save his own life, and eut the queen's throat; and, going into her chamber with an intent to do it at once, he put himself into as great a fury as he could, went into the queen's room with his dagger in his hand. However, his humanity would not allow him to surprise her, but he told her, with a great deal of respect, the orders he had received from the queen her mother
Do it, said she, stretehing out her neek; execute your orders, and I shall go and see my children, whom I so dearly love. For she thought them dead ever since they had been taken from her.
No, fair prineess! cried the humane clerk of the kitchen, all in tears; you shall see your children again. But then you shall go with me to my lodgings, where I have concealed them; and
