t let them die
of hunger before my very eyes, and I have made up my mind to take them
to the wood to-morrow, and there lose them, which will be easily done,
for whilst they are busy tying up the faggots, we have only to run away
unseen by them." "Ah!" exclaimed the woodcutter's wife, "Can you find
the heart to lose your own children?" In vain her husband represented to
her their great poverty; she would not consent to the deed. She was
poor, but she was their mother. After a while, however, having thought
over the misery it would be to her to see them die of hunger, she
assented to her husband's proposal, and went weeping to bed.

Little Thumbling had overheard all they said, for having found out, as
he lay in his bed, that they were talking of their affairs, he got up
quietly and crept under his father's stool, so as to listen to what they
were saying without been seen. He went to bed again, but did not sleep a
wink the rest of the night, thinking what he should do. He got up early,
and went down to the banks of the stream; there he filled his pockets
with small white pebbles, and then returned home. They set out all
together, and Little Thumbling said not a word to his brothers of what
he had overheard. They entered a very thick forest, wherein, at ten
paces distant, they could not see one another. The woodcutter began to
cut wood, and the children to pick up brushwood for the faggots. The
father and mother, seeing them busy at work, gradually stole farther and
farther away from them, and then suddenly ran off down a little winding
path.

[Illustration: '_The boys followed him._']

When the children found themselves all alone, they began to scream and
cry with all their might. Little Thumbling let them scream, well knowing
how he could get home again, for on their way to the forest, he had
dropped all along the road the little white pebbles he had in his
pockets. He then said to them, "Have no fear, brothers; my father and
mother have left us here, but I will take you safely home; only follow
me." They followed him, and he led them back to the house by the same
road that they had taken to the forest. They were afraid to go inside at
once, but placed themselves close to the door, to listen to what their
father and mother were saying. It chanced that just at the moment that
the woodcutter and his wife reached home, the lord of the manor sent
them ten crowns, which he had owed them a long time, and which they had
give