The Three Little Men in the Wood

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For more than a year the young Queen and the King, her husband, lived happily, and at the end of that time she bore a son. Now her stepmother and her ill-natured stepsister had already heard of her great good fortune and had felt both rage and jealousy. Now, as soon as they heard that a little prince had been born, they came to the castle, saying that they had just come on a friendly visit. But, as you can guess, they had really come to see what harm they could do, and to make their own fortunes if they could.

Then, one day, when the King had gone out hunting, and no one was about, the two bad creatures saw their chance. As soon as they were left alone with her, the woman seized the poor young Queen by the shoulders, and her daughter caught hold of her feet, and, lifting her out of her bed, they threw her out of the window and into the river which ran past the palace. Then the old woman tucked her own ugly daughter up in the bed in the young Queen's place, and covered her right up to her chin, pulling the curtains into the bargain so as to make it difficult to see who it was who lay there.

In the evening the King came back and stood in the doorway of the Queen's room. Naturally he wanted to speak to his wife, but the old stepmother put her finger to her lips.
"Softly, softly! I beg your Majesty not to go near her; she is lying in a beautiful sleep, and she must be kept quiet today."

The King, not thinking any evil, tip-toed away. But he came back again early the next morning, and when, this time, he spoke to his wife as he thought, a toad sprang out of her mouth when she answered, just as a piece of gold had done before. He asked what was wrong. But the stepmother was ready for him and said:

“That is just because she is still weak. It will soon be all right again!"

Now, late that night it so happened that one of the kitchen-boys was looking out of one of the palace win­dows. What should he see below him but a duck which was swimming in the river that flowed close to the palace and he noticed that the duck was looking up at him. Soon the duck spoke:

"King, King, what are you doing? Are you sleeping, or are you waking?"

The boy was so astonished at that that he couldn't find his tongue to answer. Then the duck spoke again:

"What are my guests a-doing?" Then the boy answered:

"They all sleep sound." And the duck asked:

"How fares my child?" And the boy replied:

"In his cradle he sleeps.”

Then the boy saw how the duck rose up out of the water and, in the form of the young Queen, entered the palace. She came to the cradle, and gave her baby drink; she shook up the coverlet of the cot, covered him up snugly again,' and then—a duck once more—out she flew and swam away again down the river.
The second night the boy was on the look-out, and, sure enough, the duck came again, asked the same questions, got the same answers, and all happened as before. But on the third night when she had attended to the baby, she said to the kitchen-boy:

"Go at once, secretly, and tell the King what you have seen and heard! Tell him to bring his sword and to swing it three times over me."

Then the boy ran to the King, who came at once with his sword, and swung it thrice over the duck. At the third swing his young Queen stood before him, bright, living and beautiful, just as she had been before.

Now the poor young Queen said little, but the King guessed what had been done. But he said nothing to any­one of the night's strange doings, but hid the Queen in a secret room.

He hid her until the next Sunday, for this was the day when the little Prince was to be christened. When the christening was over he asked:

"What ought to be done to one who takes another out of a bed and throws her into the river?”

"Nothing could be more proper,” said the old step­mother, “than to put such a one into a cask, stuck round with nails, and to roll it down the hill into the water.”

Then said the king:

"You have spoken your own sentence," and, ordering a cask to be fetched, he had the cruel old woman and her horrible daughter both put into it, and, the lid being nailed on, the cask was rolled down the hill into the water, and no one ever saw either of them again.