called Little Thumb.

The poor child bore the blame of whatsoever was done amiss in the
house, and guilty or not was always in the wrong; he was,
notwithstanding, more cunning and had a far greater share of wisdom
than all his brothers put together, and if he spake little he heard
and thought the more.

There happened now to come a very bad year, and the famine was so
great, that these poor people resolved to rid themselves of their
children. One evening, when they were all in bed and the faggot-maker
was sitting with his wife at the fire, he said to her, with his heart
ready to burst with grief:

"Thou see'st plainly that we are not able to keep our children, and I
cannot see them starve to death before my face; I am resolved to lose
them in the wood to-morrow, which may very easily be done; for while
they are busy in tying up the faggots, we may run away, and leave
them, without their taking any notice."

"Ah!" cried out his wife, "and can'st thou thyself have the heart to
take thy children out along with thee on purpose to lose them?"

In vain did her husband represent to her their extreme poverty; she
would not consent to it; she was, indeed poor, but she was their
mother. However, having considered what a grief it would be to her to
see them perish with hunger, she at last consented and went to bed all
in tears.

Little Thumb heard every word that had been spoken; for observing, as
he lay in his bed, that they were talking very busily, he had got up
softly and hid himself under his father's stool, that he might hear
what they said, without being seen. He went to bed again, but did not
sleep a wink all the rest of the night, thinking on what he ought to
do. He got up early in the morning, and went to the river side, where
he filled his pockets full of small white pebbles, and then returned
home. They all went abroad, but Little Thumb never told his brothers
one syllable of what he knew. They went into a very thick forest,
where they could not see one another at ten paces distance. The
faggot-maker began to cut wood, and the children to gather up sticks
to make faggots. Their father and mother seeing them busy at their
work, got from them by degrees, and then ran away from them all at
once, along a by-way, thro' the winding bushes.

[Illustration: "HE BROUGHT THEM HOME BY THE VERY SAME WAY THEY CAME"]

When the children saw they were left alone, they began to cry as loud
as they could. Little Thumb let the