When the king came home they told him his queen had been delivered of a dog, and he said, “What God does is well done.”  The same thing happens the two following years:  when the queen had another little boy, the sisters substituted a dog and the king said “What God does is well done;” but when she was delivered of a beautiful little girl, and they told the king she had this time borne a cat, he grew angry and ordered the poor queen to be thrown into prison.  On each occasion a fisherman who dwelt near the river drew the child from the water soon after it was thrown in, and having no children, his wife lovingly reared them.  When they had grown up, the eldest once went with some other boys to fish, and they would not have him with them, saying to him, “Go away, foundling.”  The boy, much grieved, goes to the fisherman and asks whether he is a foundling, and the old man tells him the whole story, upon which the youth, spite of the fisherman’s entreaties, at once sets off to seek his father.  After walking for many days he came to a great river, by the side of which was an old woman fishing.  He accosted her very respectfully, and she took him on her back and carried him across the water.  When a year had gone by, the second boy set out in search of his brother, and the same happened to him as to the elder one.  Then the girl went to look for her two brothers, and coming to the water she said to the old woman, “Good day, mother.  May God help you with your fishing.” (The brothers had said to her that she would seek long enough before she caught any fish, and she replied, “And thou wilt seek long enough before thou findest thy father”—­hence their failure in their quest.)

When the old woman heard that, she became quite friendly, and carried her over the water, gave her a wand, and said to her, “Go, my daughter, ever onwards by this road and when you come to a great black dog, you must pass it silently and boldly, without either laughing or looking at it.  Then you will come to a great high castle, on the threshold of which you must let the wand fall, and go straight through the castle and out again on the other side.  There you will see an old fountain out of which a large tree has grown whereon hangs a bird in a cage, which you must take down.  Take likewise a glass of water out of the fountain, and with these two things go back by the same way.  Pick up the wand again from the threshold and take it with you, and when you again pass by the dog strike him in the face with it, but be sure that you hit him, and then just come back here to me.”  The maiden found everything exactly as the old woman had said, and on her way hack she found her two brothers who had sought each other over half the world.  They went together where the black dog was lying on the road; she struck it in the face and it turned into a handsome prince, who went with them to the river.  There the old woman was still standing.  She rejoiced much to see them again, and carried them all over the