But you shall not die , even if you are ill now . ' He immediately summoned all the best doctors in the country , and they came with all their prescriptions and their medicine bottles , but next day the princess was stiff and cold in death . All the doctors could certify to that and they all put their names to this and appended their seals , and then they had done all they could . The king kept his promise . The princess 's body was lain the same day in a plain wooden chest , and set in the chapel of the castle , and on that night and every night after it , a sentinel was posted in the church , to keep watch over the chest . The first morning when they came to let the sentinel out , there was no sentinel there . They thought he had just got frightened and run away , and next evening a new one was posted in the church . In the morning he was also gone . So it went every night . When they came in the morning to let the sentinel out , there was no one there , and it was impossible to discover which way he had gone if he had run away . And what should they run away for , every one of them , so that nothing more was over heard or seen of them , from the hour that they were set on guard beside the princess 's chest ? It became now a general belief that the princess 's ghost walked , and ate up all those who were to guard her chest , and very soon there was no one left who would be placed on this duty , and the king 's soldiers deserted the service , before their turn came to be her bodyguard . The king then promised a large reward to the soldier who would volunteer for the post . This did for some time , as there were found a few reckless fellows , who wished to earn this good payment . But they never got it , for in the morning , they too had disappeared like the rest . So it had gone on for something like a whole year ; every night a sentinel had been placed beside the chest , either by compulsion or of his own free will , but not a single one of the sentinels was to be seen , either on the following day or any time thereafter . And so it had also gone with one , on the night before a certain day , when a merry young smith came wandering to the town where the king 's castle stood . It was the capital of the country , and people of every king came to it to get work . This smith , whose name was Christian , had come for that same purpose . There was no work for him in the place he belonged to , and he wanted now to seek a place in the capital .
There he entered an inn where he sat down in the public room , and got something XXXXX eat .
In after as before for if on over so to