This pleased the swineherd well enough.  He was poor, and he had a wife and ten children, and hundreds of swine to take care of, and he knew he could use the little Prince’s money and clothes for his own family, and no one would find it out.  So he let his wife take the little fellow, and as soon as the King’s messengers had gone, the woman took the royal clothes off the Prince and put on him a coarse little nightgown, and gave all his things to her own children.  But the baby Prince did not seem to mind that—­he did not seem to mind anything, even though he had no name but Prince Fairyfoot, which had been given him in contempt by the disgusted courtiers.  He grew prettier and prettier every day, and long before the time when other children begin to walk, he could run about on his fairy feet.

The swineherd and his wife did not like him at all; in fact, they disliked him because he was so much prettier and so much brighter than their own clumsy children.  And the children did not like him, because they were ill natured and only liked themselves.

So as he grew older year by year, the poor little Prince was more and more lonely.  He had no one to play with, and was obliged to be always by himself.  He dressed only in the coarsest and roughest clothes; he seldom had enough to eat, and he slept on straw in a loft under the roof of the swineherd’s hut.  But all this did not prevent his being strong and rosy and active.  He was as fleet as the wind, and he had a voice as sweet as a bird’s; he had lovely sparkling eyes, and bright golden hair; and he had so kind a heart that he would not have done a wrong or cruel thing for the world.  As soon as he was big enough, the swineherd made him go out into the forest every day to take care of the swine.  He was obliged to keep them together in one place, and if any of them ran away into the forest, Prince Fairyfoot was beaten.  And as the swine were very wild and unruly, he was very often beaten, because it was almost impossible to keep them from wandering off; and when they ran away, they ran so fast, and through places so tangled, that it was almost impossible to follow them.

The forest in which he had to spend the long days was a very beautiful one, however, and he could take pleasure in that.  It was a forest so great that it was like a world in itself.  There were in it strange, splendid trees, the branches of which interlocked overhead, and when their many leaves moved and rustled, it seemed as if they were whispering secrets.  There were bright, swift, strange birds, that flew about in the deep golden sunshine, and when they rested on the boughs, they, too, seemed telling one another secrets.  There was a bright, clear brook, with water as sparkling and pure as crystal, and with shining shells and pebbles of all colours lying in the gold and silver sand at the bottom.  Prince Fairyfoot always thought the brook knew the forest’s secret also, and sang it softly to the flowers as it ran