o her
cheeks. She thought of the deliverance of her brothers, and she kissed
the king's hand; he pressed her to his heart, and ordered all the
church bells to ring marriage peals. The lovely dumb girl from the
woods was to be queen of the country.

The archbishop whispered evil words into the ear of the king, but they
did not reach his heart. The wedding was to take place, and the
archbishop himself had to put the crown upon her head. In his anger
he pressed the golden circlet so tightly upon her head as to give her
pain. But a heavier circlet pressed upon her heart--her grief for her
brothers; so she thought nothing of the bodily pain. Her lips were
sealed, a single word from her mouth would cost her brothers their
lives, but her eyes were full of love for the good and handsome king,
who did everything he could to please her. Every day she grew more and
more attached to him, and longed to confide in him, tell him her
sufferings; but dumb she must remain, and in silence must bring her
labor to completion. Therefore at night she stole away from his side
into her secret chamber, which was decorated like a cave, and here she
knitted one shirt after another. When she came to the seventh all her
flax was worked up; she knew that these nettles which she was to use
grew in the church-yard, but she had to pluck them herself. How was
she to get there? "Oh, what is the pain of my fingers compared with
the anguish of my heart?" she thought. "I must venture out; the good
God will not desert me!" With as much terror in her heart as if she
were doing some evil deed she stole down one night into the moonlit
garden, and through the long alleys out into the silent streets to the
church-yard. There she saw, sitting on a gravestone, a group of
hideous ghouls, who took off their tattered garments, as if they were
about to bathe, and then they dug down into the freshly made graves
with their skinny fingers, and tore the flesh from the bodies and
devoured it. Elise had to pass close by them, and they fixed their
evil eyes upon her; but she said a prayer as she passed, picked the
stinging nettles, and hurried back to the palace with them.

Only one person saw her, but that was the archbishop, who watched
while others slept. Surely now all his bad opinions of the queen were
justified; all was not as it should be with her; she must be a witch,
and therefore she had bewitched the king and all the people.

He told the king in the confessional