Page:Hansel and Gretel and other stories.djvu/229

RAPUNZEL innocently said, "Tell me, mother, how it happens you find it more difficult to come up to me than the young King's son, who is with me in a moment!"

"Oh, you wicked child!" exclaimed the witch, "what do I hear? I thought I had separated you from all the world, and yet you have deceived me." And, seizing Rapunzel's beautiful hair in a fury, she gave her a couple of blows with her left hand, and, taking a pair of scissors in her right, snip, snap, she cut off all her beautiful tresses, and they fell upon the ground. Then she was so hard-hearted that she took the poor maiden into a great desert, and left her to die in great misery and grief.

But the same day when the old witch had carried Rapunzel off, in the evening she made the tresses fast above to the window-latch, and when the King's son came, and called out:

she let them down. The Prince mounted; but when he got to the top he found, not his dear Rapunzel, but the witch, who looked at him with furious and wicked eyes. "Aha!" she exclaimed, scornfully, "you would fetch your dear wife; but the beautiful bird sits no longer in her nest, singing; the cat has taken her away, and will now scratch out your eyes. To you Rapunzel is lost; you will never see her again." 225