e compared with
her ill-used Heinrich! The latter ate heartily, and toward the end of
the meal dropped his knife, as though by accident.

"Pick that up, my girl," said he.

Haennchen protested good-humouredly, but obeyed none the less. As she
stooped to the floor Heinrich seized her by the neck and held another
knife to her throat. "Now, girl, show me where your master keeps his
money," he growled hoarsely. "If you value your life, make haste."

"Let me go and I'll tell you," gasped Haennchen; and when he had loosened
his grip on her throat she looked at him calmly.

"Don't make such a fuss about it, Heinrich," she said pleasantly. "If
you take my master's money, you must take me too, for this will be no
place for me. Will you take me with you, Heinrich?"

The hulking fellow was taken completely off his guard by her apparent
acquiescence, and touched by her desire to accompany him, which
he attributed, with the conceit of his kind, to his own personal
attractions.

"If I find the money, you shall come with me, Haennchen," he conceded
graciously. "But if you play me false--" The sentence ended with an
expressive motion of his knife.

"Very well, then," said the maid. "The money is in master's room. Come
and I will show you where it is concealed."

She led him to the miller's room, showed him the massive coffer in which
lay her master's wealth, and gave him a piece of iron wherewith to prise
it open.

"I will go to my own room," she said, "and get my little savings, and
then we shall be ready to go."

So she slipped away, and her erstwhile sweetheart set to work on the
miller's coffer.

"The villain!" said Haennchen to herself when she was outside the room.
"Now I know that master was right when he said that Heinrich was no fit
suitor to come courting me."

With that she slammed the door to and turned the key, shutting the thief
in a room as secure as any prison-cell. He threatened and implored her,
but Haennchen was deaf to oaths and entreaties alike. Outside she found
the miller's son playing happily, and called him to her. "Go to father
as quickly as you can," she said, putting him on the road to Hersel.
"You will meet him down there. Tell him there is a thief in the mill."

The child ran as fast as his little legs would carry him, but ere he had
gone many yards a shrill whistle sounded from the barred window behind
which Heinrich was imprisoned.

"Diether," shouted the robber to an accomplice in hidi