e branches, and asked,--

"Are you warm, maidens? Are you warm, little red cheeks? Are you warm,
little pigeons?"

"Ugh, Frost, the cold is hurting us. We are frozen. We are waiting for
our bridegrooms, but the cursed fellows have not turned up."

Frost came a little lower in the tree, and crackled louder and
swifter.

"Are you warm, maidens? Are you warm, my little red cheeks?"

"Go to the devil!" they cried out. "Are you blind? Our hands and feet
are frozen!"

Frost came still lower in the branches, and cracked and crackled
louder than ever.

"Are you warm, maidens?" he asked.

"Into the pit with you, with all the fiends," the girls screamed at
him, "you ugly, wretched fellow!"... And as they were cursing at him
their bad words died on their lips, for the two girls, the cross
children of the cruel stepmother, were frozen stiff where they sat.

Frost hung from the lowest branches of the tree, swaying and crackling
while he looked at the anger frozen on their faces. Then he climbed
swiftly up again, and crackling and cracking, chuckling to himself, he
went off, leaping from fir tree to fir tree, this way and that through
the white, frozen forest.

In the morning the old woman says to her husband,--

"Now then, old man, harness the mare to the sledge, and put new hay in
the sledge to be warm for my little ones, and lay fresh rushes on the
hay to be soft for them; and take warm rugs with you, for maybe they
will be cold, even in their furs. And look sharp about it, and don't
keep them waiting. The frost is hard this morning, and it was harder
in the night."

The old man had not time to eat even a mouthful of black bread before
she had driven him out into the snow. He put hay and rushes and soft
blankets in the sledge, and harnessed the mare, and went off to the
forest. He came to the great fir, and found the two girls sitting
under it dead, with their anger still to be seen on their frozen, ugly
faces.

He picked them up, first one and then the other, and put them in the
rushes and the warm hay, covered them with the blankets, and drove
home.

The old woman saw him coming, far away, over the shining snow. She ran
to meet him, and shouted out,--

"Where are the little ones?"

"In the sledge."

She snatched off the blankets and pulled aside the rushes, and found
the bodies of her two cross daughters.

Instantly she flew at the old man in a storm of rage. "What have you
done to my children, my littl