ou see that is the way of the world.

THE SIX SWANS

A king was once hunting in a great wood, and he hunted the game so
eagerly that none of his courtiers could follow him. When evening came
on he stood still and looked round him, and he saw that he had quite
lost himself. He sought a way out, but could find none. Then he saw an
old woman with a shaking head coming towards him; but she was a witch.

'Good woman,' he said to her, 'can you not show me the way out of the
wood?'

'Oh, certainly, Sir King,' she replied, 'I can quite well do that, but
on one condition, which if you do not fulfil you will never get out of
the wood, and will die of hunger.'

'What is the condition?' asked the King.

'I have a daughter,' said the old woman, 'who is so beautiful that she
has not her equal in the world, and is well fitted to be your wife; if
you will make her lady-queen I will show you the way out of the wood.'

The King in his anguish of mind consented, and the old woman led him
to her little house where her daughter was sitting by the fire. She
received the King as if she were expecting him, and he saw that she was
certainly very beautiful; but she did not please him, and he could not
look at her without a secret feeling of horror. As soon as he had lifted
the maiden on to his horse the old woman showed him the way, and the
King reached his palace, where the wedding was celebrated.

The King had already been married once, and had by his first wife seven
children, six boys and one girl, whom he loved more than anything in the
world. And now, because he was afraid that their stepmother might not
treat them well and might do them harm, he put them in a lonely castle
that stood in the middle of a wood. It lay so hidden, and the way to it
was so hard to find, that he himself could not have found it out had
not a wise-woman given him a reel of thread which possessed a marvellous
property: when he threw it before him it unwound itself and showed him
the way. But the King went so often to his dear children that the Queen
was offended at his absence. She grew curious, and wanted to know what
he had to do quite alone in the wood. She gave his servants a great deal
of money, and they betrayed the secret to her, and also told her of the
reel which alone could point out the way. She had no rest now till she
had found out where the King guarded the reel, and then she made some
little white shirts, and, as she had learnt from her