ld woman standing close beside her, who
said:

'My child, what have you done? Why didn't you leave the flowers alone?
They were your twelve brothers. Now they are changed for ever into
ravens.'

The girl asked, sobbing: 'Is there no means of setting them free?'

'No,' said the old woman, 'there is only one way in the whole world, and
that is so difficult that you won't free them by it, for you would have
to be dumb and not laugh for seven years, and if you spoke a single
word, though but an hour were wanting to the time, your silence would
all have been in vain, and that one word would slay your brothers.'

Then the girl said to herself: 'If that is all I am quite sure I can
free my brothers.' So she searched for a high tree, and when she had
found one she climbed up it and spun all day long, never laughing or
speaking one word.

Now it happened one day that a King who was hunting in the wood had a
large greyhound, who ran sniffing to the tree on which the girl sat, and
jumped round it, yelping and barking furiously. The King's attention was
attracted, and when he looked up and beheld the beautiful Princess with
the golden star on her forehead, he was so enchanted by her beauty that
he asked her on the spot to be his wife. She gave no answer, but nodded
slightly with her head. Then he climbed up the tree himself, lifted her
down, put her on his horse and bore her home to his palace.

The marriage was celebrated with much pomp and ceremony, but the bride
neither spoke nor laughed.

When they had lived a few years happily together, the King's mother, who
was a wicked old woman, began to slander the young Queen, and said to
the King:

'She is only a low-born beggar maid that you have married; who knows
what mischief she is up to? If she is deaf and can't speak, she might
at least laugh; depend upon it, those who don't laugh have a bad
conscience.' At first the King paid no heed to her words, but the old
woman harped so long on the subject, and accused the young Queen of
so many bad things, that at last he let himself be talked over, and
condemned his beautiful wife to death.

So a great fire was lit in the courtyard of the palace, where she was
to be burnt, and the King watched the proceedings from an upper window,
crying bitterly the while, for he still loved his wife dearly. But just
as she had been bound to the stake, and the flames were licking her
garments with their red tongues, the very last moment of the