d to crawl
round on hands and knees, helping herself along with her staff. At
length, wearied to death, she reached the palace in which the Sun lived.
She knocked and begged for admission. The mother of the Sun opened the
door, and was astonished at beholding a mortal from the distant earthly
shores, and wept with pity when she heard of all she had suffered. Then,
having promised to ask her son about the Princess's husband, she hid her
in the cellar, so that the Sun might notice nothing on his return home,
for he was always in a bad temper when he came in at night. The next day
the Princess feared that things would not go well with her, for the Sun
had noticed that some one from the other world had been in the palace.
But his mother had soothed him with soft words, assuring him that this
was not so. So the Princess took heart when she saw how kindly she was
treated, and asked:

'But how in the world is it possible for the Sun to be angry? He is so
beautiful and so good to mortals.'

'This is how it happens,' replied the Sun's mother. 'In the morning
when he stands at the gates of paradise he is happy, and smiles on the
whole world, but during the day he gets cross, because he sees all the
evil deeds of men, and that is why his heat becomes so scorching; but
in the evening he is both sad and angry, for he stands at the gates of
death; that is his usual course. From there he comes back here.'

She then told the Princess that she had asked about her hus-band, but
that her son had replied that he knew nothing about him, and that her
only hope was to go and inquire of the Wind.

Before the Princess left the mother of the Sun gave her a roast chicken
to eat, and advised her to take great care of the bones, which she did,
wrapping them up in a bundle. She then threw away her second pair of
shoes, which were quite worn out, and with her child on her arm and her
staff in her hand, she set forth on her way to the Wind.

In these wanderings she met with even greater difficulties than before,
for she came upon one mountain of flints after another, out of which
tongues of fire would flame up; she passed through woods which had
never been trodden by human foot, and had to cross fields of ice and
avalanches of snow. The poor woman nearly died of these hardships, but
she kept a brave heart, and at length she reached an enormous cave
in the side of a mountain. This was where the Wind lived. There was a
little door in the railing in