The princess stopped me.
"I cannot let you attempt it with your feet bare!" she insisted.

"A fall from the top would kill you!" "So would a bite from the snake!" I answered--not believing, I confess, that there was any snake.
"It would not hurt YOU!" she replied.

"-- Wait a moment." She tore from her garment the two wide borders that met in front, and kneeling on one knee, made me put first my left foot, then my right on the other, and bound them about with the thick embroidered strips.
"You have left the ends hanging, princess!" I said.
"I have nothing to cut them off with; but they are not long enough to get entangled," she replied.
I turned to the tree, and began to climb.
Now in Bulika the cold after sundown was not so great as in certain other parts of the country--especially about the sexton's cottage; yet when I had climbed a little way, I began to feel very cold, grew still colder as I ascended, and became coldest of all when I got among the branches.

Then I shivered, and seemed to have lost my hands and feet.
There was hardly any wind, and the branches did not sway in the least, yet, as I approached the summit, I became aware of a peculiar unsteadiness: every branch on which I placed foot or laid hold, seemed on the point of giving way.

When my head rose above the branches near the top, and in the open moonlight I began to look about for the blossom, that instant I found myself drenched from head to foot.