ider must have had with her.

"My God!" cried little Maya softly, in a quivering voice. That
was all she said. Now she saw how tricky the spider had been;
now she was really caught beyond release; now there was
absolutely no chance of escape. She could no longer move any
part of her body. The end was near.

Her fury of anger was gone, there was only a great sadness in
her heart.

"I didn't know there was such meanness and wickedness in the
world," she thought. "The deep night of death is upon me.
Good-by, dear bright sun. Good-by, my dear friend-bees. Why did
I leave you? A happy life to you. I must die."

The spider sat wary, a little to one side. She was still afraid
of Maya's sting.

"Well?" she jeered. "How are you feeling, little girl?"

Maya was too proud to answer the false creature. She merely
said, after a while when she felt she couldn't bear any more:

"Please kill me right away."

"Really!" said the spider, tying a few torn threads together.
"Really! Do you take me to be as big a dunce as yourself? You're
going to die anyhow, if you're kept hanging long enough, and
that's the time for me to suck the blood out of you--when you
can't sting. Too bad, though, that you can't see how dreadfully
you've damaged my lovely web. Then you'd realize that you
deserve to die."

She dropped down to the ground, laid the end of the newly spun
thread about a stone, and pulled it in tight. Then she ran up
again, caught hold of the thread by which little enmeshed Maya
hung, and dragged her captive along.

"You're going into the shade, my dear," she said, "so that you
shall not dry up out here in the sunshine. Besides, hanging here
you're like a scarecrow, you'll frighten away other nice little
mortals who don't watch where they're going. And sometimes the
sparrows come and rob my web.-- To let you know with whom you're
dealing, my name is Thekla, of the family of cross-spiders. You
needn't tell me your name. It makes no difference. You're a fat
bit, and you'll taste just as tender and juicy by any name."

So little Maya hung in the shade of the blackberry vine, close
to the ground, completely at the mercy of the cruel spider, who
intended her to die by slow starvation. Hanging with her little
head downward--a fearful position to be in--she soon felt she
would not last many more minutes. She whimpered softly, and her
cries for help grew feebler and feebler. Who was there to hear?
Her folk at home knew nothing of