s a girl, especially when she is beautiful.

The boy, seeing his mother so melancholy, tried to grow stronger and
stronger, and counted the days before he should be large enough to go
out into the world and seek his sister, little Rosy Cheeks, along
untrodden paths filled with thorns. When he had reached his eighteenth
year he made himself a pair of calf-skin sandals with steel soles,
went to his mother, and said:--

"Mother, I have neither rest nor peace here so long as I see you so
sick and sorrowful from constantly thinking of my sister; I have
determined to go out into the wide world and not return till I can
bring news of her. I don't know whether I shall find her, but at least
I hope so, and that hope I leave with you for your consolation."

When the widow heard these words she was forced to struggle with her
feelings ere she answered: "Well, my son, my child! Do what you can
not help doing; when you return I shall see you again, and if you
don't come back I shall not weep for you, because the journey you have
in view is a long one; therefore if you are absent a long time there
will always be the hope of your return."

After saying this she mixed three loaves for him with her own milk,
one of meal, the second of bran, and the third of ashes from the
hearth. The lad put the loaves into his knapsack, bade his mother
farewell, and went out into the world like a poor boy to whom all
roads are equally long, all bridges equally wide, and who does not
know what direction to take. At the gate he stood still, cast one
glance to the east, one to the west, one to the north, and one to the
south, then took a handful of dust from under the threshold of the
door, scattered it on the wind, and turned his steps in the direction
that it was carried by the breeze.

The Poor Boy walked and walked, further and further, through many a
rich country, till he came to a moor on which no grass grew and no
water flowed. Here he stopped and pulled out his three loaves. He
began with the one made of meal, because it was the handsomest, and as
he ate it his strength increased and his thirst was quenched. Again
the Poor Boy walked on, journeying across the wide moor a whole long
summer day until nightfall, when he reached a vast forest as extensive
as the heath he had passed, but which was dense, gloomy, and forsaken
even by the winds. When he entered the wood, he saw by the trunk of a
tree an old woman with a bent figure and a wrinkled fa