g heavy with snow
and hail. A raven stood on the fence and croaked Caw! Caw! from sheer
cold; it made one shiver only to think of it. The poor duckling
certainly was in a bad case.

One evening the sun was just setting in wintry splendor when a flock
of beautiful large birds appeared out of the bushes. The duckling had
never seen anything so beautiful. They were dazzlingly white with long
waving necks; they were swans; and, uttering a peculiar cry, they
spread out their magnificent broad wings, and flew away from the cold
regions to warmer lands and open seas. They mounted so high, so very
high, and the ugly little duckling became strangely uneasy; he circled
round and round in the water like a wheel, craning his neck up into
the air after them. Then he uttered a shriek so piercing and so
strange that he was quite frightened by it himself. Oh, he could not
forget those beautiful birds, those happy birds! And as soon as they
were out of sight he ducked right down to the bottom, and when he came
up again he was quite beside himself. He did not know what the birds
were or whither they flew, but all the same he was more drawn towards
them than he had ever been by any creatures before. He did not even
envy them in the least. How could it occur to him even to wish to be
such a marvel of beauty; he would have been thankful if only the ducks
would have tolerated him among them--the poor ugly creature!

The winter was so bitterly cold that the duckling was obliged to swim
about in the water to keep it from freezing, but every night the hole
in which he swam got smaller and smaller. Then it froze so hard that
the surface ice cracked, and the duckling had to use his legs all the
time, so that the ice should not close in round him; at last he was so
weary that he could move no more, and he was frozen fast into the ice.

Early in the morning a peasant came along and saw him; he went out
onto the ice and hammered a hole in it with his heavy wooden shoe, and
carried the duckling home to his wife. There it soon revived. The
children wanted to play with it, but the duckling thought they were
going to ill-use him, and rushed in his fright into the milk pan, and
the milk spurted out all over the room. The woman shrieked and threw
up her hands; then it flew into the butter cask, and down into the
meal tub and out again. Just imagine what it looked like by this time!
The woman screamed and tried to hit it with the tongs, and the
children