And when the King ordered it to be brought in, what do
you think it was--a great, gray bag of dust!
The Prince, now that he was old enough to go out in the world, had
expected a very different fortune from this--a Kingdom all his own in
some other land, a chest of jewels, and a gold crown.
But his father, the King, helped the Prince to put the bag of dust,
which was very heavy indeed, upon his back.
"You are to carry this to the boundary line of the Kingdom without
once dropping it," he said. And the Prince, who always did what his
father, the King, said, set out.
It seemed as if the bag grew heavier at every step. The Prince had not
known that dust could weigh so much. It sifted out of the coarse bag
and covered his fine velvet cloak so that you could not have told him
from the poorest subject in the Kingdom. The folk in the streets
laughed at him, and the dogs barked at his heels.
Before the Prince had gone very far he came to a field where all the
princes from the Kingdoms near by were playing games and riding their
beautiful horses. The Prince stopped a moment, because he wanted to
join them. He could ride a horse without a saddle, and hit the centre
of a target with his bow and arrow. But as he stopped he remembered
the bag of dust upon his back which his father, the King, had said
that he must not set down.
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