"Then, one evening, someone found a shabby old book at the back of a shelf in the Royal Library. To whom it belonged and how it got there no one seemed to know, but anyway, the book proved of priceless value as it contained a remarkable recipe for curing just such an illness as the Princess was suffering from. I need not tell you all about this recipe now: it is sufficient that one of the most important items was--pumpkin juice. Needless to say, the King seized eagerly at any chance to save his daughter's life, and so all the pumpkins available were quickly purchased and the recipe made up, and a dose of this new cure was given to the Princess. From the very first dose there was a marked change for the better, and with perseverance this new remedy gradually worked wonders in the Princess; she grew stronger and stronger and was soon on the road to a complete recovery.
"But first you must know that in order to have plenty of pumpkins on hand to complete the cure, the delighted King had a special garden made in which to grow nothing but pumpkins; and he employed a special staff of gardeners to look after this garden. And every day he would go to the garden himself to see how the pumpkins were getting on. One night, a fearful storm swept over the country; and while the thunder growled and the lightning flashed and the wind and rain struggled for mastery--some strange things were taking place down in the pumpkin garden. For when morning broke--there was not a single pumpkin left in the garden: nor in the whole of the country, apparently. But it was not the storm that had destroyed them all. Under cover of the black night and the storm somebody had come and had deliberately cut off the pumpkins, and destroyed them.
"Now this somebody--although he was not discovered for days afterward--was an evil little dwarf man, who imagined that he owed the King a grudge--and sought to punish him this way.
"Nor was this all. When the Princess's nurse went to fetch her medicine--there was none left. All the bottles were smashed to pieces and the precious liquid was spilled all over the floor.
"The King was terribly upset, and sent messengers far and wide, post haste, to try to get some more pumpkins. But they could not get any. And from that time, as each hour passed, the Princess began to decline again. She got steadily worse, and weaker and weaker as days went by. You can imagine what grief it must have been to her father to see her losing her newly-gained health, to see her cheeks growing pale and thin again--to see her gradually fading away. He made every attempt possible to get hold of a pumpkin--but it seemed as if all the pumpkins in the land had suddenly vanished.