ng one,
you shall be my daughter. If you are middle-aged, you shall be my wife.
So come out, and fear nothing.'

Then the maiden came out of her hiding-place, and stood before him.

[Illustration: The Maiden creeps out of the Pot.]

'Fear nothing,' said the ogre again; and when he went away to hunt he
left her to look after the house. In the evening he returned, bringing
with him hares, partridges, and gazelles, for the girl's supper; for
himself he only cared for the flesh of men, which she cooked for him. He
also gave into her charge the keys of six rooms, but the key of the
seventh he kept himself.

And time passed on, and the girl and the ogre still lived together.

She called him 'Father,' and he called her 'Daughter,' and never once
did he speak roughly to her.

One day the maiden said to him, 'Father, give me the key of the upper
chamber.'

'No, my daughter,' replied the ogre. 'There is nothing there that is any
use to you.'

'But I want the key,' she repeated again.

However the ogre took no notice, and pretended not to hear. The girl
began to cry, and said to herself: 'To-night, when he thinks I am
asleep, I will watch and see where he hides it'; and after she and the
ogre had supped, she bade him good-night, and left the room. In a few
minutes she stole quietly back, and watched from behind a curtain. In a
little while she saw the ogre take the key from his pocket, and hide it
in a hole in the ground before he went to bed. And when all was still
she took out the key, and went back to the house.

The next morning the ogre awoke with the first ray of light, and the
first thing he did was to look for the key. It was gone, and he guessed
at once what had become of it.

But instead of getting into a great rage, as most ogres would have done,
he said to himself, 'If I wake the maiden up I shall only frighten her.
For to-day she shall keep the key, and when I return to-night it will be
time enough to take it from her.' So he went off to hunt.

The moment he was safe out of the way, the girl ran upstairs and opened
the door of the room, which was quite bare. The one window was closed,
and she threw back the lattice and looked out. Beneath lay a garden
which belonged to the Prince, and in the garden was an ox, who was
drawing up water from the well all by himself--for there was nobody to
be seen anywhere. The ox raised his head at the noise the girl made in
opening the lattice, and said to her, 'Good mor