at him in her usual fashion; but she was soon to discover that this
fence was too high to jump over, and that the youth would not sacrifice
a hair's-breadth of his rights. If she gave him a single bad word
without cause, he gave her a dozen back; and if she lifted her hand
against him, he caught up a stone or a log of wood, or anything else
which happened to come to hand, and cried out, "Don't dare to come a
step nearer, or I'll split your skull and mash you to soup." The woman
had never heard such language from anybody, least of all from her
servants; but her husband rejoiced in secret when he heard her
quarrelling, and he did not stand by his wife, for the boy did not
neglect his duty. The woman tried to break the boy's spirit with hunger,
and refused him food, but the boy helped himself by force to whatever he
could find, and helped himself to milk from the cow besides, so that he
was never hungry. The more difficult she found it to manage the boy, the
more she vented her rage on her husband and others about her. When the
prince had led this vexatious life for some weeks, and found that each
day was like the other, he determined to pay the old woman out for her
wickedness in such a fashion that the world should be quite rid of such
a monster. In order to carry out his design, he caught a dozen wolves
and shut them up in a cave, and he threw them a beast from his flock
every day, so that they should not starve. Who can describe the woman's
rage when she saw her property gradually dwindling, for every day the
boy brought home an animal less than he had taken to pasture in the
morning, and his only answer when questioned was, "The wolves have
devoured it." She screamed like a maniac, and threatened to throw the
boy to the wild beasts to devour, but he answered, laughing, "Wouldn't
your own savage meat be better for them?" Then he left the wolves for
three days without food in the cave, and at night, when every one was
asleep, he drove the herd from their stall, and put the twelve wolves in
instead, fastening the door securely, so that the wild beasts should not
escape. When he had thus arranged everything, he turned his back on the
farm, for he had long been tired of playing herd-boy, and now felt
strong enough for greater undertakings.[153]

But what horrors happened next morning, when the woman went into the
stall to let out the animals and to milk the cows! The wolves, maddened
with hunger, rushed upon her, pulled her