h stood
still, and the King said,

"My child, who art thou, and what art thou doing there?" She answered,

"I am a poor girl, and am rinsing yarn."

Then the King felt pity for her, and as he saw that she was very
beautiful, he said,

"Will you go with me?"

"Oh yes, with all my heart," answered she; and she felt very glad to be
out of the way of her mother and sister.

So she stepped into the coach and went off with the King; and when they
reached his castle the wedding was celebrated with great splendour, as
the little men in the wood had foretold.

At the end of a year the young Queen had a son; and as the step-mother
had heard of her great good fortune she came with her daughter to the
castle, as if merely to pay the King and Queen a visit. One day, when
the King had gone out, and when nobody was about, the bad woman took the
Queen by the head, and her daughter took her by the heels, and dragged
her out of bed, and threw her out of the window into a stream that
flowed beneath it. Then the old woman put her ugly daughter in the bed,
and covered her up to her chin. When the King came back, and wanted to
talk to his wife a little, the old woman cried,

"Stop, stop! she is sleeping nicely; she must be kept quiet to-day."

The King dreamt of nothing wrong, and came again the next morning; and
as he spoke to his wife, and she answered him, there jumped each time
out of her mouth a toad instead of the piece of gold as heretofore. Then
he asked why that should be, and the old woman said it was because of
her great weakness, and that it would pass away.

But in the night, the boy who slept in the kitchen saw how something in
the likeness of a duck swam up the gutter, and said,--

"My King, what mak'st thou?
Sleepest thou, or wak'st thou?"

But there was no answer. Then it said,

"What cheer my two guests keep they?"

So the kitchen-boy answered,

"In bed all soundly sleep they."

It asked again,

"And my little baby, how does _he_?"

And he answered,

"He sleeps in his cradle quietly."

Then the duck took the shape of the Queen and went to the child, and
gave him to drink, smoothed his little bed, covered him up again, and
then, in the likeness of a duck, swam back down the gutter. In this way
she came two nights, and on the third she said to the kitchen-boy,

"Go and tell the King to brandish his sword three times over me on the
threshold!"

Then the kitchen-boy ran and