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 Rh Not long after this, the man returned, and the first things he asked for were the key and the egg. Trembling with fear, she gave them to him, but he knew at once when he saw the mark on the egg, that she had been into the forbidden room. "Since you have been into that room," he cried, "against my will, you shall now go there again against your own. Your life is ended." With these words he threw her to the ground, and dragging her by her hair to where the block stood, he cut off her head and her limbs, so that her blood flowed over the floor, and there he left her with the bodies of his other victims.

"I will now go and fetch the second one," he said; and once again he went to the same house, begging like a poor old man. The second daughter brought him a piece of bread, and he caught her and carried her away as he had the eldest one.

She did not meet with any better fate than her sister; for she was also overcome by her curiosity and looked into the forbidden room, and had to pay for it with her life on the man's return.

He next went and carried away the third sister. Now this sister was wiser and more cunning than the others, and after the wizard had given her the keys and the egg, and had left her, the first thing she did was to put the egg safely away. Then she looked over the house, and, finally, went into the forbidden room. Alas! what did she see! her two dear sisters lying murdered and cut to pieces. But she took the head and the body, and the arms and the legs, of each, and put them carefully together, and she had no sooner done this than the limbs began to move, and the different parts became joined to one another, and both sisters opened their eyes and were