Then Prince Ruby laughed at her fears, and said he would kill the ogre and set the town free; only the old woman must let him sleep a while in her house, and promise to wake him when the time came to go forth and meet the ogre.
"What good will that do to me?" asked the old woman; "you will only be killed, and then my son will have to go to-morrow. Sleep on, stranger, if you will, but I will not wake you!"
Then Prince Ruby laughed again. "It is of no use, mother!" he said, "fight the ogre I will; and as you will not wake me I must even go to the place of meeting and sleep there."
So he rode off on his steed beyond the gates of the city, and, tying his horse to a tree he lay down to sleep peacefully. By and by the ogre came for its dinner, but hearing no noise, and seeing no one, it thought the townspeople had failed in their bargain, and prepared to revenge itself. But Ruby Prince jumped up, refreshed by slumber, and falling on the ogre, cut off its head and hands in a trice. These he stuck on the gate of the town, and returning to the old woman's house, told her he had killed the ogre, and lay down to sleep again.
Now when the townspeople saw the ogre's head and hands peering over the city gate, they thought the dreadful creature had come to revenge itself for some slight. Therefore they ran to the king in a great fright, and he, thinking the old woman, whose son was to have formed the ogre's dinner, must have played some trick, went with his officers to the place where she lived, and found her laughing and singing.
"Why do you laugh?" he asked sternly.
"I laugh because the ogre is killed!" she replied, "and because the prince who killed it is sleeping in my house."
Great was the astonishment at these words, yet, sure enough, when they came to examine more closely, they saw that the ogre's head and hands were those of a dead thing. |
