ngdom, where he was received with great joy,
and there they lived long and happily.

The THREE LITTLE MEN in the WOOD

THERE was once a man, whose wife was dead, and a woman, whose husband
was dead; and the man had a daughter, and so had the woman. The girls
were acquainted with each other, and used to play together sometimes in
the woman's house. So the woman said to the man's daughter,

"Listen to me, tell your father that I will marry him, and then you
shall have milk to wash in every morning and wine to drink, and my
daughter shall have water to wash in and water to drink."

The girl went home and told her father what the woman had said. The man
said,

"What shall I do! Marriage is a joy, and also a torment."

At last, as he could come to no conclusion, he took off his boot, and
said to his daughter,

"Take this boot, it has a hole in the sole; go up with it into the loft,
hang it on the big nail and pour water in it. If it holds water, I will
once more take to me a wife; if it lets out the water, so will I not."

The girl did as she was told, but the water held the hole together, and
the boot was full up to the top. So she went and told her father how it
was. And he went up to see with his own eyes, and as there was no
mistake about it, he went to the widow and courted her, and then they
had the wedding.

The next morning, when the two girls awoke, there stood by the bedside
of the man's daughter milk to wash in and wine to drink, and by the
bedside of the woman's daughter there stood water to wash in and water
to drink.

On the second morning there stood water to wash in and water to drink
for both of them alike. On the third morning there stood water to wash
in and water to drink for the man's daughter, and milk to wash in and
wine to drink for the woman's daughter; and so it remained ever after.
The woman hated her step-daughter, and never knew how to treat her badly
enough from one day to another. And she was jealous because her
step-daughter was pleasant and pretty, and her real daughter was ugly
and hateful.

Once in winter, when it was freezing hard, and snow lay deep on hill and
valley, the woman made a frock out of paper, called her step-daughter,
and said,

"Here, put on this frock, go out into the wood and fetch me a basket of
strawberries; I have a great wish for some."

"Oh dear," said the girl, "there are no strawberries to be found in
winter; the ground is frozen, and the sno