not have prevented the thing that had happened--that
the Queen had laid hands on the child and having killed it had thrown
its body to the gray wolf that had been watching outside.

And while they were speaking Sheen awakened. She put out her arms but
her child was not beside her. She found blood upon the pillows. Then
she heard her sisters-in-law accuse her to the King of having killed her
child and flung its body to the gray wolf outside. She fell into a swoon
and when she came out of it her mind was lost to her.

The King knelt to her and begged her to tell him what had happened. But
she only knew she was to say no word. Then he used to watch her and he
wondered why she cried no tear. On the fourth day after she rose from
her bed and searched the Castle for the piece of cloth she had spun
and woven out of the bog-down. She found it and began to sew it for the
seventh shirt. The King's sisters came to him and said, "The woman you
brought here is of another race from ours. She has forgotten that a
child was born to her, and that she killed it and flung its body to the
gray wolf. She sits there now just stitching a garment." The King went
and saw her stitching and stitching as if her life depended on each
stitch she put into the cloth. He spoke to her and she looked up but did
not speak. Then the King's heart was hardened. He took her and brought
her outside the gate of the Castle. "Go back to the people you came
from," said he, "for I cannot bear that you should be here, and not
speak to me of what has happened." Sheen knew she was being sent from
the house he had brought her to. A bitter cry came from her. Then the
stitched cloth that was in her hand became bog-down and was blown away
on the breeze. When she saw this happen she turned from the King's
Castle and ran through the woods crying and crying.

She went through the woods for many days, living on berries and the
water of springs. At last she came to the Spae-Woman's house. The
Spae-Woman was before the door and she welcomed Sheen back. She gave her
drinks she had made from strange herbs, and in a season Sheen's mind and
health came back to her, and she knew all that had happened. She thought
she would win back her seven brothers, and then, with their help, win
back her child and her husband. But she knew she would have to gather
the bog-down, spin the threads and weave them all over again, as
her tears and cries had broken her task. She told her story to the