echo from
a sepulchre.

"To your first husband," I answered.

"He will kill me!" she moaned.

"At least he will take you off my hands!"

"Give me my daughter," she suddenly screamed, grinding her teeth.

"Never! Your doom is upon you at last!"

"Loose my hands for pity's sake!" she groaned. "I am in torture. The
cords are sunk in my flesh."

"I dare not. Lie down!" I said.

She threw herself on the ground like a log.

The rest of the night passed in peace, and in the morning she again
seemed dead.

Before evening we came in sight of the House of Bitterness, and the next
moment one of the elephants came alongside of my horse.

"Please, king, you are not going to that place?" whispered the Little
One who rode on his neck.

"Indeed I am! We are going to stay the night there," I answered.

"Oh, please, don't! That must be where the cat-woman lives!"

"If you had ever seen her, you would not call her by that name!"

"Nobody ever sees her: she has lost her face! Her head is back and side
all round."

"She hides her face from dull, discontented people!--Who taught you to
call her the cat-woman?"

"I heard the bad giants call her so."

"What did they say about her?"

"That she had claws to her toes."

"It is not true. I know the lady. I spent a night at her house."

"But she MAY have claws to her toes! You might see her feet, and her
claws be folded up inside their cushions!"

"Then perhaps you think that I have claws to my toes?"

"Oh, no; that can't be! you are good!"

"The giants might have told you so!" I pursued.

"We shouldn't believe them about you!"

"Are the giants good?"

"No; they love lying."

"Then why do you believe them about her? I know the lady is good; she
cannot have claws."

"Please how do you know she is good?"

"How do you know I am good?"

I rode on, while he waited for his companions, and told them what I had
said.

They hastened after me, and when they came up,--

"I would not take you to her house if I did not believe her good," I
said.

"We know you would not," they answered.

"If I were to do something that frightened you--what would you say?"

"The beasts frightened us sometimes at first, but they never hurt us!"
answered one.

"That was before we knew them!" added another.

"Just so!" I answered. "When you see the woman in that cottage, you will
know that she is good. You may wonder at what she does, but she will
always be good. I know her bette