iller who had a beautiful daughter, and when she was
grown up he became anxious that she should be well married and taken
care of; so he thought,

"If a decent sort of man comes and asks her in marriage, I will give her
to him."

Soon after a suitor came forward who seemed very well to do, and as the
miller knew nothing to his disadvantage, he promised him his daughter.
But the girl did not seem to love him as a bride should love her
bridegroom; she had no confidence in him; as often as she saw him or
thought about him, she felt a chill at her heart. One day he said to
her,

"You are to be my bride, and yet you have never been to see me."

The girl answered,

"I do not know where your house is."

Then he said,

"My house is a long way in the wood."

She began to make excuses, and said she could not find the way to it;
but the bridegroom said,

"You must come and pay me a visit next Sunday; I have already invited
company, and I will strew ashes on the path through the wood, so that
you will be sure to find it."

When Sunday came, and the girl set out on her way, she felt very uneasy
without knowing exactly why; and she filled both pockets full of peas
and lentils. There were ashes strewed on the path through the wood,
but, nevertheless, at each step she cast to the right and left a few
peas on the ground. So she went on the whole day until she came to the
middle of the wood, where it was the darkest, and there stood a lonely
house, not pleasant in her eyes, for it was dismal and unhomelike. She
walked in, but there was no one there, and the greatest stillness
reigned. Suddenly she heard a voice cry,

"Turn back, turn back, thou pretty bride,
Within this house thou must not bide,
For here do evil things betide."

The girl glanced round, and perceived that the voice came from a bird
who was hanging in a cage by the wall. And again it cried,

"Turn back, turn back, thou pretty bride,
Within this house thou must not bide,
For here do evil things betide."

Then the pretty bride went on from one room into another through the
whole house, but it was quite empty, and no soul to be found in it.

At last she reached the cellar, and there sat a very old woman nodding
her head.

"Can you tell me," said the bride, "if my bridegroom lives here?"

"Oh, poor child," answered the old woman, "do you know what has happened
to you? You are in a place of cut-throats. You thought you were a brid