d called out to the good man:

'Ho, old man, halloa! I have found the sheep already!'

The man thought the witch was really his wife, and he did not know that
his wife was the sheep; so he went home with her, glad at heart because
his sheep was found. When they were safe at home the witch said to the
man:

'Look here, old man, we must really kill that sheep lest it run away to
the wood again.'

The man, who was a peaceable quiet sort of fellow, made no objections,
but simply said:

'Good, let us do so.'

The daughter, however, had overheard their talk, and she ran to the
flock and lamented aloud:

'Oh, dear little mother, they are going to slaughter you!'

'Well, then, if they do slaughter me,' was the black sheep's answer,
'eat you neither the meat nor the broth that is made of me, but gather
all my bones, and bury them by the edge of the field.'

Shortly after this they took the black sheep from the flock and
slaughtered it. The witch made pease-soup of it, and set it before the
daughter. But the girl remembered her mother's warning. She did not
touch the soup, but she carried the bones to the edge of the field and
buried them there; and there sprang up on the spot a birch tree--a very
lovely birch tree.

Some time had passed away--who can tell how long they might have been
living there?--when the witch, to whom a child had been born in the
meantime, began to take an ill-will to the man's daughter, and to
torment her in all sorts of ways.

Now it happened that a great festival was to be held at the palace, and
the King had commanded that all the people should be invited, and that
this proclamation should be made:

'Come, people all!
Poor and wretched, one and all!
Blind and crippled though ye be,
Mount your steeds or come by sea.'

And so they drove into the King's feast all the outcasts, and the
maimed, and the halt, and the blind. In the good man's house, too,
preparations were made to go to the palace. The witch said to the man:

'Go you on in front, old man, with our youngest; I will give the elder
girl work to keep her from being dull in our absence.'

So the man took the child and set out. But the witch kindled a fire on
the hearth, threw a potful of barleycorns among the cinders, and said to
the girl:

'If you have not picked the barley out of the ashes, and put it all back
in the pot before nightfall, I shall eat you up!'

Then she hastened after the others, and