lue Beard, "or I will come up to you."

"I am coming," answered his wife; and then she cried:

"Anne, sister Anne, dost thou see any one coming?"

"I see," replied sister Anne, "a great dust that comes this way."

"Are they my brothers?"

"Alas! no, my dear sister, I see a flock of sheep."

"Will you not come down?" cried Blue Beard.

"One moment longer," said his wife, and then she cried out:

"Anne, sister Anne, dost thou see nobody coming?"

"I see," said she, "two horsemen coming, but they are yet a great way
off."

"God be praised," she cried presently, "they are my brothers; I am
beckoning to them, as well as I can, for them to make haste."

Then Blue Beard bawled out so loud, that he made the whole house
tremble. The distressed wife came down, and threw herself at his feet,
all in tears, with her hair about her shoulders.

"Nought will avail," said Blue Beard, "you must die"; then, taking
hold of her hair with one hand, and lifting up his scimitar with the
other, he was going to take off her head.

The poor lady turning about to him, and looking at him with dying
eyes, desired him to afford her one little moment to recollect
herself.

"No, no," said he, "recommend thyself to God," and was just ready to
strike.

At this very instant there was such a loud knocking at the gate, that
Blue Beard made a sudden stop. The gate was opened, and presently
entered two horsemen, who drawing their swords, ran directly to Blue
Beard. He knew them to be his wife's brothers, one a dragoon, the
other a musqueteer; so that he ran away immediately to save himself;
but the two brothers pursued so close, that they overtook him before
he could get to the steps of the porch, when they ran their swords
thro' his body and left him dead. The poor wife was almost as dead as
her husband, and had not strength enough to rise and welcome her
brothers.

Blue Beard had no heirs, and so his wife became mistress of all his
estate. She made use of one part of it to marry her sister Anne to a
young gentleman who had loved her a long while; another part to buy
captains' commissions for her brothers; and the rest to marry herself
to a very worthy gentleman, who made her forget the ill time she had
passed with Blue Beard.

[Illustration]

_The Moral_

_O curiosity, thou mortal bane!
Spite of thy charms, thou causest often pain
And sore regret, of which we daily find
A thousand instances attend mankind:
F