," and she put
her hand into his hand, saying,

"I would willingly go with thee, but I do not know how I shall get out.
When thou comest, bring each time a silken rope, and I will make a
ladder, and when it is quite ready I will get down by it out of the
tower, and thou shalt take me away on thy horse." They agreed that he
should come to her every evening, as the old woman came in the day-time.
So the witch knew nothing of all this until once Rapunzel said to her
unwittingly,

"Mother Gothel, how is it that you climb up here so slowly, and the
King's son is with me in a moment?"

"O wicked child," cried the witch, "what is this I hear! I thought I had
hidden thee from all the world, and thou hast betrayed me!"

In her anger she seized Rapunzel by her beautiful hair, struck her
several times with her left hand, and then grasping a pair of shears in
her right--snip, snap--the beautiful locks lay on the ground. And she
was so hard-hearted that she took Rapunzel and put her in a waste and
desert place, where she lived in great woe and misery.

The same day on which she took Rapunzel away she went back to the tower
in the evening and made fast the severed locks of hair to the
window-hasp, and the King's son came and cried,

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel! let down your hair."

Then she let the hair down, and the King's son climbed up, but instead
of his dearest Rapunzel he found the witch looking at him with wicked
glittering eyes.

"Aha!" cried she, mocking him, "you came for your darling, but the sweet
bird sits no longer in the nest, and sings no more; the cat has got her,
and will scratch out your eyes as well! Rapunzel is lost to you; you
will see her no more."

The King's son was beside himself with grief, and in his agony he sprang
from the tower: he escaped with life, but the thorns on which he fell
put out his eyes. Then he wandered blind through the wood, eating
nothing but roots and berries, and doing nothing but lament and weep for
the loss of his dearest wife.

So he wandered several years in misery until at last he came to the
desert place where Rapunzel lived with her twin-children that she had
borne, a boy and a girl. At first he heard a voice that he thought he
knew, and when he reached the place from which it seemed to come
Rapunzel knew him, and fell on his neck and wept. And when her tears
touched his eyes they became clear again, and he could see with them as
well as ever.

Then he took her to his ki