;
But while she sighed, he smiled!
"Promise, when you are queen," he said,
"To give me your first-born child!"
Little she tho't what that might mean,
Or if ever in truth she should be queen
Anything, so that the work was done--
Anything, so that the gold was spun!
She promised all that he chose to ask;
And blithely he began the task.

Round went the wheel, and round,
Whiz, and whiz-z, and whiz-z-z!
So swift that the thread at the spindle point
Flew off with buzz and hiss.

She dozed--so tired her eyelids were--
To the endless whirr, and whirr, and whirr;
Though not even sleep could overcome
The wheel's revolving hum, hum, hum!
When at last she woke the room was clean,
Not a broken bit of straw was seen;
But in huge high heaps were piled and rolled
Great spools of gold--nothing but gold!
It was just at the earliest peep of dawn,
And she was alone--the dwarf was gone.

It was indeed a marvellous thing
For a miller's daughter to wed a king;
But never was royal lady seen
More fair and sweet than this young queen.
The spinning dwarf she quite forgot
In the ease and pleasure of her lot;
And not until her first-born child
Into her face had looked and smiled
Did she remember the promise made;
Then her heart grew sick, her soul afraid.

One day her chamber door
Pushed open just a chink,
And she saw the well-known crooked dwarf,
His wise smile and his blink.
He claimed at once the promised child;
But she gave a cry so sad and wild
That even his heart was touched to hear;
And, after a little, drawing near,

He whispered and said: "You pledged
The baby, and I came;
But if in three days you can learn
By foul or fair my name--
By foul or fair, by wile or snare,
You can its syllables declare,
Then is the child yours--only then--
And me you shall never see again!"

He vanished from her sight,
And she called her pages in;
She sent one this way, and one that;
She called her kith and kin,
Bade one go here, and one go there,
Despatched them thither, everywhere--
That from each quarter each might bring
The oddest names he could to the king.

Next morning the dwarf appeared,
And the queen began to say,
"Caspar," "Balthassar," "Melchoir"--
But the dwarf cried out, "Nay, nay!"
Shaking his little crooked frame,
"That's not my name, that's not my nam