r, I'll send you to the Lava."

One day the ogress, who was on the look-out for an opportunity to
devour Parmetella, took twelve sacks of various seeds--peas,
chick-peas, lentils, vetches, kidney-beans, beans, and lupins--and
mixed them all together; then she said to her, "Traitress, take these
seeds and sort them all, so that each kind may be separated from the
rest; and if they are not all sorted by this evening, I'll swallow you
like a penny tart."

Poor Parmetella sat down beside the sacks, weeping, and said, "O
mother, mother, how will this golden root prove a root of woes to me!
Now is my misery completed; by seeing a black face turned white, all
has become black before my eyes. Alas! I am ruined and undone--there is
no help for it. I already seem as if I were in the throat of that
horrid ogress; there is no one to help me, there is no one to advise
me, there is no one to comfort me!"

As she was lamenting thus, lo! Thunder-and-Lightning appeared like a
flash, for the banishment laid upon him by the spell had just ended.
Although he was angry with Parmetella, yet his blood could not turn to
water, and seeing her grieving thus he said to her, "Traitress, what
makes you weep so?" Then she told him of his mother's ill-treatment of
her, and her wish to make an end of her, and eat her up. But
Thunder-and-Lightning replied, "Calm yourself and take heart, for it
shall not be as she said." And instantly scattering all the seeds on
the ground he made a deluge of ants spring up, who forthwith set to
work to heap up all the seeds separately, each kind by itself, and
Parmetella filled the sacks with them.

When the ogress came home and found the task done, she was almost in
despair, and cried, "That dog Thunder-and-Lightning has played me this
trick; but you shall not escape thus! So take these pieces of bed-tick,
which are enough for twelve mattresses, and mind that by this evening
they are filled with feathers, or else I will make mincemeat of you."

The poor girl took the bed-ticks, and sitting down upon the ground
began to weep and lament bitterly, making two fountains of her eyes.
But presently Thunder-and-Lightning appeared, and said to her, "Do not
weep, Traitress,--leave it to me, and I will bring you to port; so let
down your hair, spread the bed-ticks upon the ground, and fall to
weeping and wailing, and crying out that the king of the birds is dead,
then you'll see what will happen."

Parmetella did as she w