praying that it would find safety and a free life, however humble.
She then sneaked back to the traders, and pretended to be cuddling
the baby in her arms.
The caravan traveled two full days before her deception was
detected. When it was, the princess once again played audience to
violent anger. The traders yelled and cursed the girl; then they
beat her with fists and even with sticks, accompanied by more curses
and threats; but nothing they could do could force her to tell what
she had done with the baby. The traders, remembering the promises
made to them by the king to encourage the secrecy of their charges,
and fearing the consequences of a breach of that secrecy, sent
riders back over the route they had traveled, to search everywhere.
Meanwhile an old woodcutter, who lived in the hut with his wife,
found the baby and brought it inside. As they looked upon the
beautiful, healthy child, their eyes shone with a sparkle that they
thought had long ago disappeared forever. But even in their
delight, they recognized immediately that the child was no ordinary
foundling, for it had noble features and was wrapped in silks and
wore a gold brooch with a white lily on it.
They soon recognized that the child would need better fare than the
rough crusts and ordinary water the couple subsisted on--for they
were extremely poor--so they began to wonder how they could take
care of it.
"We could pick some of our neighbor's fruit at night," suggested the
woman, "or perhaps sell the gold brooch."
"Or we could cheat the king the next time he buys wood," said the
woodcutter sarcastically. "But we won't do any of those things.
You know that it isn't right to do wrong, even to bring good. God
has brought us this child; I pray that he will help us feed it."
Now, the old woodcutter had been saving a few coins from his meager
earnings over the past three years in order to buy himself a new axe
head in the spring. "But," he thought to himself, "I suppose I
could sharpen this old head one more season, and with a little
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