Another moment and it had vanished completely , and the prince took the ring and made his way back to the palace . The king stared with surprise at the sight of the ring , but he thought of another way of getting rid of the young man which was surer even than the other two . ` This evening you will mount my colt and ride him to the field , and break him in properly . ' The prince received this command as silently as he had received the rest , but no sooner was he in his room than he called for the dove , who said : ` Attend to me . My father longs to see you dead , and thinks he will kill you by this means . He himself is the colt , my mother is the saddle , my two sisters are the stirrups , and I am the bridle . Do not forget to take a good club , to help you in dealing with such a crew . ' So the prince mounted the colt , and gave him such a beating that when he came to the palace to announce that the animal was now so meek that it could be ridden by the smallest child , he found the king so bruised that he had to be wrapped in cloths dipped in vinegar , the mother was too stiff to move , and several of the daughters ' ribs were broken . The youngest , however , was quite unharmed . That night she came to the prince and whispered to him : ` Now that they are all in too much pain to move , we had better seize our chance and run away . Go to the stable and saddle the leanest horse you can find there . ' But the prince was foolish enough to choose the fattest : and when they had started and the princess saw what he had done , she was very sorry , for though this horse ran like the wind , the other flashed like thought . However , it was dangerous to go back , and they rode on as fast as the horse would go . In the night the king sent for his youngest daughter , and as she did not come he sent again ; but she did not come any the more for that . The queen , who was a witch , discovered that her daughter had gone off with the prince , and told her husband he must leave his bed and go after them . The king got slowly up , groaning with pain , and dragged himself to the stables , where he saw the lean horse still in his stall . Leaping on his back he shook the reins , and his daughter , who knew what to expect and had her eyes open , saw the horse start forward , and in the twinkling of an eye changed her own steed into a cell , the prince into a hermit , and herself into a nun . When the king reached the chapel , he pulled up his horse and asked if a girl and a young man had passed that way . The hermit raised his eyes , which were bent on the ground , and said that he had not seen a living creature . The king , much disgusted at this news , and not knowing what to do , returned home and told his wife that , though he had ridden for miles , he had come across nothing but a hermit and a nun in a cell .
` Why those were the runaways , of course , ' she cried , flying XXXXX a passion , ` and if you had only brought a scrap of the nun 's dress , or a bit of stone from the wall , I should have had them in my power . '
So after by for in into of that though with