over the wide world.

He came at last to his father's palace. The roof was gone, and there
were holes in the walls. He left his horse at the edge of the garden,
and crept up to the ruined palace and peeped through a hole. Inside,
in the great hall, was sitting a huge baby girl, filling the whole
hall. There was no room for her to move. She had knocked off the roof
with a shake of her head. And she sat there in the ruined hall,
sucking her thumb.

And while Prince Ivan was watching through the hole he heard her
mutter to herself,--

"_Eaten the father, eaten the mother,
And now to eat the little brother_"

And she began shrinking, getting smaller and smaller every minute.

Little Prince Ivan had only just time to get away from the hole in the
wall when a pretty little baby girl came running out of the ruined
palace.

"You must be my little brother Ivan," she called out to him, and came
up to him smiling. But as she smiled the little Prince saw that her
teeth were black; and as she shut her mouth he heard them clink
together like pokers.

"Come in," says she, and she took little Prince Ivan with her to a
room in the palace, all broken down and cobwebbed. There was a
dulcimer lying in the dust on the floor.