“You would simply return,” he said, “and give me your ideas about things.  I want my own ideas.”

The Queen then suggested that he should take a vacation, and visit other kingdoms, and see for himself how things were managed in them.

This did not suit the king.  “A vacation would not answer,” he said.  “I should not be gone a week before something would happen here which would make it necessary for me to come back.”

The Queen then suggested that he be banished for a certain time, say a year.  In that case he could not come back, and would be at full liberty to visit foreign kingdoms, and find out how they were governed.

This plan pleased the King.  “If it were made impossible for me to come back,” he said, “of course I could not do it.  The scheme is a good one.  Let me be banished.”  And he gave orders that his council should pass a law banishing him for one year.

Preparations were immediately begun to carry out this plan, and in day or two the King bade farewell to the Queen, and left his kingdom, a banished man.  He went away on foot, entirely unattended.  But, as he did not wish to cut off all communication between himself and his kingdom, he made an arrangement which he thought a very good one.  At easy shouting distance behind him walked one of the officers of the court, and at shouting distance behind him walked another, and so on at distances of about a hundred yards from each other.  In this way there would always be a line of men extending from the King to his palace.  Whenever the King had walked a hundred yards the line moved on after him, and another officer was put in the gap between the last man and the palace door.  Thus, as the King walked on, his line of followers lengthened, and was never broken.  Whenever he had any message to send to the Queen, or any other person in the palace, he shouted it to the officer next him, who shouted it to the one next to him, and it was so passed on until it reached the palace.  If he needed food, clothes, or any other necessary thing, the order for it was shouted along the line, and the article was passed to him from man to man, each one carrying it forward to his neighbor, and then retiring to his proper place.

In this way the King walked on day by day until he had passed entirely out of his own kingdom.  At night he stopped at some convenient house on the road, and if any of his followers did not find himself near a house or cottage when the King shouted back the order to halt, he laid himself down to sleep wherever he might be.  By this time the increasing line of followers had used up all the officers of the court, and it became necessary to draw upon some of the under government officers in order to keep the line perfect.