ful wife and his
pretty children.

LITTLE THUMB.

Once upon a time there was a fagot-maker and his wife, who had seven
children, all boys. The eldest was but ten years old, and the youngest
only seven.

They were very poor, and their seven children were a great source of
trouble to them because not one of them was able to earn his bread. What
gave them yet more uneasiness was that the youngest was very delicate,
and scarce ever spoke a word, which made people take for stupidity that
which was a sign of good sense. He was very little, and when born he was
no bigger than one's thumb; hence he was called Little Thumb.

The poor child was the drudge of the household, and was always in the
wrong. He was, however, the most bright and discreet of all the
brothers; and if he spoke little, he heard and thought the more.

There came a very bad year, and the famine was so great that these poor
people resolved to rid themselves of their children. One evening, when
they were in bed, and the fagot-maker was sitting with his wife at the
fire, he said to her, with his heart ready to burst with grief:--

"You see plainly that we no longer can give our children food, and I
cannot bear to see them die of hunger before my eyes; I am resolved to
lose them in the wood to-morrow, which may very easily be done, for,
while they amuse themselves in tying up fagots, we have only to run away
and leave them without their seeing us."

"Ah!" cried out his wife, "could you really take the children and lose
them?"

In vain did her husband represent to her their great poverty; she would
not consent to it. She was poor, but she was their mother.

However, having considered what a grief it would be to her to see them
die of hunger, she consented, and went weeping to bed.

Little Thumb heard all they had said; for, hearing that they were
talking business, he got up softly and slipped under his father's seat,
so as to hear without being seen. He went to bed again, but did not
sleep a wink all the rest of the night, thinking of what he had to do.
He got up early in the morning, and went to the brookside, where he
filled his pockets full of small white pebbles, and then returned home.
They all went out, but Little Thumb never told his brothers a word of
what he knew.

[Illustration: "SLIPPED UNDER HIS FATHER'S SEAT." p. 30.]

They went into a very thick forest, where they could not see one
another at ten paces apart. The fagot-maker beg