ago he had torn himself free and run away into
the forest. But half his beard was left, wedged in the trunk, and
Sunrise pointed to that and said,--

"Tell me, brothers, was it the heat of the stove that gave you your
headaches? Or had this long beard something to do with it?"

The brothers grew red, and laughed, and told him the whole truth.

Meanwhile Sunrise had been looking at the end of the beard, the end of
the half beard that was left, and he saw that it had been torn out by
the roots, and that drops of blood from the little man's chin showed
the way he had gone.

Quickly the brothers went back to the hut and ate up the sheep. Then
they leapt on their horses, and rode off into the green forest,
following the drops of blood that had fallen from the little man's
chin. For three days they rode through the green forest, until at last
the red drops of the trail led them to a deep pit, a black hole in the
earth, hidden by thick bushes and going far down into the underworld.

Sunrise left his brothers to guard the hole, while he went off into
the forest and gathered bast, and twisted it, and made a strong rope,
and brought it to the mouth of the pit, and asked his brothers to
lower him down.

He made a loop in the rope. His brothers kissed him on both cheeks,
and he kissed them back. Then he sat in the loop, and Evening and
Midnight lowered him down into the darkness. Down and down he went,
swinging in the dark, till he came into a world under the world, with
a light that was neither that of the sun, nor of the moon, nor of the
stars. He stepped from the loop in the rope of twisted bast, and set
out walking through the underworld, going whither his eyes led him,
for he found no more drops of blood, nor any other traces of the
little old man.

He walked and walked, and came at last to a palace of copper, green
and ruddy in the strange light. He went into that palace, and there
came to meet him in the copper halls a maiden whose cheeks were redder
than the aloe and whiter than the snow. She was the youngest daughter
of the King, and the loveliest of the three princesses, who were the
loveliest in all the world. Sweetly she curtsied to Sunrise, as he
stood there with his golden hair and his eyes blue as the sky at
morning, and sweetly she asked him,--

"How have you come hither, my brave young man--of your own will or
against it?"

"Your father has sent to rescue you and your sisters."

She bade him sit at th