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 began to cut wood, and the
children to gather up sticks to make fagots. Their father and mother,
seeing them busy at their work, got away from them unbeknown and then
all at once ran as fast as they could through a winding by-path.

When the children found they were alone, they began to cry with all
their might. Little Thumb let them cry on, knowing very well how to get