all sorts of fresh fears. First of all, the soft wind blowing gently
through the dry stalks of the heather and its thousands of little
bells raised a sweet rustling, which the princess took for the
hissing of serpents, for you know she had been naughty for so long
that she could not in a great many things tell the good from the
bad. Then nobody could deny that there, all round about the heath,
like a ring of darkness, lay the gloomy fir-wood, and the princess
knew what it was full of, and every now and then she thought she
heard the howling of its wolves and hyenas. And who could tell but
some of them might break from their covert and sweep like a shadow
across the heath? Indeed, it was not once nor twice that for a
moment she was fully persuaded she saw a great beast coming leaping
and bounding through the moonlight to have her all to himself. She
did not know that not a single evil creature dared set foot on that
heath, or that, if one should do so, it would that instant wither up
and cease. If an army of them had rushed to invade it, it would have
melted away on the edge of it, and ceased like a dying wave.--She
even imagined that the moon was slowly coming nearer and nearer down
the sky to take her and freeze her to death in her arms. The wise
woman, too, she felt sure, although her cottage looked asleep, was
watching her at some little window. In this, however, she would have
been quite right, if she had only imagined enough--namely, that the
wise woman was watching OVER her from the little window. But after
all, somehow, the thought of the wise woman was less frightful than
that of any of her other terrors, and at length she began to wonder
whether it the moonlight to have her all to himself. She did not
know that not a single evil creature dared set foot on that heath,
or that, if one should do so, it would that instant wither up and
cease. If an army of them had rushed to invade it, it would have
melted away on the edge of it, and ceased like a dying wave.--She