The people got home as best they could, and each fell to thinking how he could stop the vine and so be king.  Even Nimble Jim heard of this.  So, every night, he watched, hoping to see the elfin queen.  At last she came, as before, on her moonbeam footpath, saying:  “Hello, Nimble Jim!  How are your melons by this time?”

But he was in no mood to be facetious now.  He only said, humbly: 

“May it please your majesty, what can I do to stop the growth of this horrible vine, and instantly sweep it from the face of the earth?  Help me, I beg your gracious majesty!”—­and Jim knelt before her.

“Ha, ha!  Nimble Jim don’t seem to like melons!  I told you you’d be sorry,” laughed the little elfin queen.  “I suppose you still want to be as rich as the king?  Or perhaps you would like to be the king himself?” said she, tauntingly.

“Of course I would, your majesty,” said Jim, “if the vine can only be stopped.”

“You are a very good cobbler, Nimble Jim,” she answered, “and since you mended my shoe so nicely, and as the king has promised to exchange with any one who will wither and destroy the vine, and as you might as well be king as another (and as you need a good lesson,” said she to herself), “I give you the means to do it all!”

And the tiny queen pulled off the mended shoe, and cried:  “Here, you silly boy!  Take this and run to the palace.  Once there, you need touch but a tendril with this magic shoe, and the vine will wither and disappear, and the crown and kingdom will be yours.  I wish you joy of both.  Good-bye!  You will learn contentment yet, poor Jim, I hope,” she added, as he ran out of hearing, with the precious little shoe in his hand.

Leaving his poor mother behind, for he had forgotten all about her during these days, Jim set off for the palace.  It was a long, hard journey, on account of the melon-vines, that not only blocked the road, but even chased him.  Many a narrow escape had he from being crushed to death in the embrace of some young tendril that would shoot out, wriggling and writhing toward him like a great green serpent.

At length, he arrived at the palace gate, which in old times was marble, but now was only a hole that had been cut through a melon.

“Halt!  Who goes there!” shouted a sentinel, thrusting his spear in front of Jim’s panting breast.

“It’s only Nimble Jim, the Cobbler.  I want to see the king,” said the boy.

“Be off, you fellow!” shouted the sentry.  “Our noble king don’t hob-nob with cobblers!  Be off, I say, or——­” And he shook his spear at our hero ominously.

“Hold, there!” shouted the king himself, straining out of a window to look between the melon-leaves.  “Hold, I say!  What do you want, young cobbler?”

“I want your crown and kingdom, sire,” boldly answered Jim.  “I’ve heard of the new law, and I’ll stop the melon-vine.”

“Let him pass, guards,” shouted the king; “and send him hither.”