hat shall I do?" she asked the
nurse.

"Send out and have the ground dug over and filled in," the nurse
replied. "In this way, if any of the children are hidden there, they
will be covered over and smothered, and you will also kill the rats
that have been harboring them."

The Ranee at once sent for workmen and bade them go out to the rat
holes and dig and fill them in, and the children and the rats would
certainly have been smothered just as the nurse had planned, only
luckily the old mother rat was hiding near by and overheard what was
said. She at once hastened home and told her friends what was going to
happen, and they all made their escape before the workmen arrived. She
also took the children out of the hole and hid them under the steps
that led down into an old unused well. There were twenty-one steps,
and she hid one child under each step. She told them not to utter a
sound whatever happened, and then she and her friends ran away and
left them.

Presently the workmen came with their tools and began to fill in the
rat holes. The little daughter of the head workman had come with him,
and while he and his fellows were at work the little girl amused
herself by running up and down the steps into the well. Every time she
trod upon a step it pinched the child who lay under it. The little
boys made no sound when they were pinched, but lay as still as stones,
but every time the child trod on the step under which the Princess lay
she sighed, and the third time she felt the pinch she cried out, "Have
pity on me and tread more lightly. I too am a little girl like you!"

The workman's daughter was very much frightened when she heard the
voice. She ran to her father and told him the steps had spoken to her.

The workman thought this a strange thing. He at once went to the old
Ranee and told her he dared no longer work near the well, for he
believed a witch or a demon lived there under the steps; and he
repeated what his little daughter had told him.

The wicked nurse was with the Ranee when the workman came to her. As
soon as he had gone, the nurse said: "I am sure some of those children
must still be alive. They must have escaped from the rat holes and be
hiding under the steps. If we send out there we will probably find
them."

The Ranee was frightened at the thought they might still be alive. She
ordered some servants to come with her, and she and the nurse went out
to look for the children.

But when the littl