and led the widow woman into the castle.

'How now? you are going to send the child away to the wood?' said the
witch in a suspicious tone, and tried to interfere.

But the King's son stood firm by what he had commanded, and said:

'Carry the child about the wood; perhaps that will pacify it.'

So the widow woman took the child to the wood. She came to the edge of
a marsh, and seeing a herd of reindeer there, she began all at once to
sing--

'Little Bright-eyes, little Redskin,
Come nurse the child you bore!
That bloodthirsty monster,
That man-eater grim,
Shall nurse him, shall tend him no more.
They may threaten and force as they will,
He turns from her, shrinks from her still,'

and immediately the reindeer drew near, and nursed and tended the child
the whole day long; but at nightfall it had to follow the herd, and said
to the widow woman:

'Bring me the child to-morrow, and again the following day; after that I
must wander with the herd far away to other lands.'

The following morning the widow woman went back to the castle to fetch
the child. The witch interfered, of course, but the Prince said:

'Take it, and carry it about in the open air; the boy is quieter at
night, to be sure, when he has been in the wood all day.'

So the widow took the child in her arms, and carried it to the marsh in
the forest. There she sang as on the preceding day--

'Little Bright-eyes, little Redskin,
Come nurse the child you bore!
That bloodthirsty monster,
That man-eater grim,
Shall nurse him, shall tend him no more.
They may threaten and force as they will,
He turns from her, shrinks from her still,'

and immediately the reindeer left the herd and came to the child, and
tended it as on the day before. And so it was that the child throve,
till not a finer boy was to be seen anywhere. But the King's son had
been pondering over all these things, and he said to the widow woman:

'Is there no way of changing the reindeer into a human being again?'

'I don't rightly know,' was her answer. 'Come to the wood with me,
however; when the woman puts off her reindeer skin I shall comb her head
for her; whilst I am doing so you must burn the skin.'

Thereupon they both went to the wood with the child; scarcely were they
there when the reindeer appeared and nursed the child as before. Then
the widow woman said to the reindeer:

'Since you a