know a good woman when she saw her; took her for one like herself,
even after she had slept in her arms.

Immediately the wise woman set her down, and, walking on, within a
few paces vanished among the trees. Then the cries of the princess
rent the air, but the fir-trees never heeded her; not one of their
hard little needles gave a single shiver for all the noise she made.
But there were creatures in the forest who were soon quite as much
interested in her cries as the fir-trees were indifferent to them.
They began to hearken and howl and snuff about, and run hither and
thither, and grin with their white teeth, and light up the green
lamps in their eyes. In a minute or two a whole army of wolves and
hyenas were rushing from all quarters through the pillar like stems
of the fir-trees, to the place where she stood calling them, without
knowing it. The noise she made herself, however, prevented her from
hearing either their howls or the soft pattering of their many
trampling feet as they bounded over the fallen fir needles and
cones.

One huge old wolf had outsped the rest--not that he could run
faster, but that from experience he could more exactly judge whence
the cries came, and as he shot through the wood, she caught sight at
last of his lamping eyes coming swiftly nearer and nearer. Terror
silenced her. She stood with her mouth open, as if she were going to
eat the wolf, but she had no breath to scream with, and her tongue
curled up in her mouth like a withered and frozen leaf. She could do
nothing but stare at the coming monster. And now he was taking a few
shorter bounds, measuring the distance for the one final leap that
should bring him upon her, when out stepped the wise woman from
behind the very tree by which she had set the princess down, caught