ere very hungry and very sad. When she had lain
in this state for more than a week, she grew light-headed, and after a
while died. The youngest child thought she was asleep, and that he could
not waken her; but the elder boy rushed weeping out of the house, knowing
that she was really dead, and that they were left alone in the wide
world.

Just at that very moment a man passed by, who looked into the pale, thin,
hungry face of the sobbing child, with a kind, gentle look, and let
himself be led into the wretched hut, where the poor dead mother lay. His
heart bled for the poor orphans, for he was one who was full of
tenderness: so he spake kind words to them; and when his servants came up
after a while, he gave orders that their dead mother should be buried,
and that the children should be taken from the miserable hut, to dwell in
his own beautiful castle.

To it the children were removed. The servants of the Lord of the castle
put on them clean fresh clothes--washed their old dirt from them; and as
no one knew what were their names, they gave them two new names, which
shewed they belonged to this family; and they were cared for, and given
all they wanted.

Happy was now their lot. They had all they wanted: good food in plenty,
instead of hunger and thirst; clean raiment, instead of rags and
nakedness; and kind teachers, who instructed them day by day as they were
able to bear it. There were a multitude of other happy children too in
the castle, with whom they lived, and learned, and spent their glad days.
Sometimes they played in the castle, and sometimes they ran about in the
grounds that were round it, where were all sorts of flowers, and
beautiful trees full of singing birds, and green grass, and painted
butterflies; and they were as happy as children could be.

All over these grounds they might play about as they would: only on one
side of them they were forbidden to go. There the garden ended in a wide
waste plain, and there seemed to be nothing to tempt children to leave
the happy garden to walk in it, especially as the kind Lord of the castle
bid them never set foot on it: and yet it was said that some children had
wandered into it, and that of these, many had never come back again. For
in that desert dwelt the enemies of the Lord of the castle; and there was
nothing they loved better than to pounce down upon any children whom he
had taken as his own, and carry them off, to be their slaves in the midst