For the king had been informed by a swift messenger of all that had passed long before the arrival of the prisoners.
“We did, sire; but not only could we keep her no longer, but we knew not that she was the princess.”
“You ought to have known, the moment you cast your eyes upon her,” said the king. “Any one who does not know a princess the moment he sees her, ought to have his eyes put out.”
To this they returned no answer, for they had none ready.
“Why did you not bring her at once to the palace,” pursued the king, “whether you knew her to be a princess or not? My proclamation left nothing to your judgment. It said _every child_.”
“We heard nothing of the proclamation, sire.”
“You ought to have heard,” said the king. “It is enough that I make proclamations; it is for you to read them. Are they not written in letters of gold upon the brazen gates of this palace?”
“A poor shepherd, your majesty—how often must he leave his flock, and go hundreds of miles to look whether there may not be something in letters of gold upon the brazen gates? We did not know that your majesty had made a proclamation, or even that the princess was lost.”
“You ought to have known,” said the king.
“But,” said the queen, taking up the word, “all that is as nothing, when I think how you misused the darling.”
The only ground the queen had for saying thus, was what Agnes had told her as to how the princess was dressed; and her condition seemed to the queen so miserable, that she had imagined all sorts of oppression and cruelty.
But this was more than the shepherdess, who had not yet spoken, could bear.
“She would have been dead, and _not_ buried, long ago, madam, if I had not carried her home in my two arms.”
“Why does she say her _two_ arms?” said the king to himself. “Has she more than two? Is there treason in that?”
“You dressed her in cast-off clothes,” said the queen.
“I dressed her in my own sweet child’s Sunday clothes. And this is what I get for it!” cried the shepherdess, bursting into tears.
“And what did you do with the clothes you took off her? Sell them?”
“Put them in the fire, madam. They were not fit for the poorest child in the mountains. They were so ragged that you could see her skin through them in twenty different places.”