er.

At midnight the king noticed a strange light in the room below him. He
peeped through a chink in the boards and saw the charcoal-burner
asleep, his wife lying in a dead faint, and three old women, all in
white, standing over the baby, each holding a lighted taper in her
hand.

The first old woman said: "My gift to this boy is that he shall
encounter great dangers."

The second said: "My gift to him is that he shall go safely through
them all, and live long."

The third one said: "And I give him for wife the baby daughter born
this night to the king who lies upstairs on the straw."

The three old women blew out their tapers and all was quiet. They were
the Fates.

The king felt as though a sword had been thrust into his heart. He lay
awake till morning trying to think out some plan by which he could
thwart the will of the three old Fates.

When day broke the child began to cry and the charcoal-burner woke up.
Then he saw that his wife had died during the night.

"Ah, my poor motherless child," he cried, "what shall I do with you
now?"

"Give me the baby," the king said. "I'll see that he's looked after
properly and I'll give you enough money to keep you the rest of your
life."

The charcoal-burner was delighted with this offer and the king went
away promising to send at once for the baby.

A few days later when he reached his palace he was met with the joyful
news that a beautiful little baby daughter had been born to him. He
asked the time of her birth, and of course it was on the very night
when he saw the Fates. Instead of being pleased at the safe arrival of
the baby princess, the king frowned.

Then he called one of his stewards and said to him: "Go into the
forest in a direction that I shall tell you. You will find there a
cottage where a charcoal-burner lives. Give him this money and get
from him a little child. Take the child and on your way back drown it.
Do as I say or I shall have you drowned."

The steward went, found the charcoal-burner, and took the child. He
put it into a basket and carried it away. As he was crossing a broad
river he dropped the basket into the water.

"Goodnight to you, little son-in-law that nobody wanted!" the king
said when he heard what the steward had done.

He supposed of course that the baby was drowned. But it wasn't. Its
little basket floated in the water like a cradle, and the baby slept
as if the river were singing it a lullaby. It floated down with t