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 her sadly through her gay silken slippers. She threw
herself on the heath, which came up to the walls of the cottage on
every side, and roared and screamed with rage. Suddenly, however,
she remembered how her screaming had brought the horde of wolves and
hyenas about her in the forest, and, ceasing at once, lay still,
gazing yet again at the moon. And then came the thought of her
parents in the palace at home. In her mind's eye she saw her mother
sitting at her embroidery with the tears dropping upon it, and her
father staring into the fire as if he were looking for her in its
glowing caverns. It is true that if they had both been in tears by
her side because of her naughtiness, she would not have cared a
straw; but now her own forlorn condition somehow helped her to
understand their grief at having lost her, and not only a great
longing to be back in her comfortable home, but a feeble flutter of
genuine love for her parents awoke in her heart as well, and she
burst into real tears--soft, mournful tears--very different from
those of rage and disappointment to which she was so much used. And
another very remarkable thing was that the moment she began to love
her father and mother, she began to wish to see the wise woman
again. The idea of her being an ogress vanished utterly, and she
thought of her only as one to take her in from the moon, and the
loneliness, and the terrors of the forest-haunted heath, and hide