Snow out to see if it
would soon be day, and this she did three times. The third time it was
just beginning to grow light, and then she said:

'Out on thee, ugly Bushy Bride,
Sleeping so soft by the young King's side,
On sand and stones my bed I make,
And my brother sleeps with the cold snake,
Unpitied and unwept.'

'Now I shall never come again,' she said, and then she turned to go. But
the two men who were holding the King by the arms seized his hands and
forced a knife into his grasp, and then made him cut her little finger
just enough to make it bleed.

Thus the true bride was freed. The King then awoke, and she told him
all that had taken place, and how her step-mother and step-sister
had betrayed her. Then the brother was at once taken out of the
snake-pit--the snakes had never touched him--and the step-mother and
step-sister were flung down into it instead of him.

No one can tell how delighted the King was to get rid of that hideous
Bushy Bride, and get a Queen who was bright and beautiful as day itself.

And now the real wedding was held, and held in such a way that it was
heard of and spoken about all over seven kingdoms. The King and his
bride drove to church, and Little Snow was in the carriage too. When the
blessing was given they went home again, and after that I saw no more of
them.(28)

(28) From J. Moe.

SNOWDROP

ONCE upon a time, in the middle of winter when the snow-flakes were
falling like feathers on the earth, a Queen sat at a window framed
in black ebony and sewed. And as she sewed and gazed out to the white
landscape, she pricked her finger with the needle, and three drops of
blood fell on the snow outside, and because the red showed out so well
against the white she thought to herself:

'Oh! what wouldn't I give to have a child as white as snow, as red as
blood, and as black as ebony!'

And her wish was granted, for not long after a little daughter was born
to her, with a skin as white as snow, lips and cheeks as red as blood,
and hair as black as ebony. They called her Snowdrop, and not long after
her birth the Queen died.

After a year the King married again. His new wife was a beautiful woman,
but so proud and overbearing that she couldn't stand any rival to her
beauty. She possessed a magic mirror, and when she used to stand before
it gazing at her own reflection and ask:

'Mirror, mirror, hanging there,
Who in all the la