The GREEN Fairy Book - online children's book

Illustrated classic fairy tales for children by Andrew Lang

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148
THE GREEN FAIRY BOOK.
he hoped that they might all live together in one house or the other, and that the king would give him his daughter to wife. So it all turned out just as the king wished. The young man married the princess and they lived hap­pily in the palace of gold.
But the king's wife was jealous both of the young man and of her own daughter. The princess had told her mother about the snuff-box, which gave them everything they wanted, and the queen bribed a servant to steal the snuff-box. They noticed carefully Avhere it was put away every night, and one evening, when the whole world was asleep, the woman stole it and brought it to her old mis­tress. Oh, how happy the queen was! She opened the lid and the snuff-box said to her: "What do you want?" And she answered at once: "I want you to take me and my husband and my servants and this beautiful house and set us down on the other side of the Red Sea, but my daughter and her husband are to stay behind."
When the young couple woke up they found themselves back in the old castle, without their snuff-box. They hunted for it high and low, but quite vainly. The young man felt that no time was to be lost, and he mounted his horse and filled his pockets with as much gold as he could carry. On he went, away, away, away, but he sought the snuff-box in vain all up and down the neighboring coun­tries, and very soon he came to the end of all his money. But still he went on, as fast as the strength of his horse would let him, begging his way.
Some one told him that he ought to consult the moon, for the moon traveled far and might be able to tell him something. So he went away, away, awav, and ended, somehow or other, by reaching the land "of the moon. There he found a little old woman who said to him: "What are you doing here? My son eats all living things he sees, and if you are wise you will go away without com­ing any further." But the young man told her all his sad tale, and how he possessed a wonderful snuff-box, and how it had been stolen from him, and how he had nothing left now that he was parted from his wife and was in need of everything. And he said that perhaps her son, who traveled so far, might have seen a palace with laths of gold and tiles of diamond and furnished all in silver and gold. As he spoke these last words the moon came in and
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