Page:History of Cinderella, or, The little glass slipper (1).pdf/21

21 When they had reached the entrance to the dark thick wood, the two ruffians took them out of the coach, telling them they might now walk a little way, and gather flowers; and, while the children were skipping about like lambs, the ruffians turned their backs on them, and began to consult about what they had to do.

"In good truth,” says the one who had been sitting all the way between the children, "now I have seen their cherub faces, and heard their pretty speech, I have no heart to do the bloody deed; let us fling away the ugly knife, and send the children back to their uncle.” “That I will not,” says the other; “what boots their pretty speech to us? And who will pay us for being so chicken-hearted?”

At last the ruffians fell into so great a passion about butchering the innocent little creatures, that he who wished to spare their lives, suddenly opened the great knife he had brought to kill them, and stabbed the other to the heart, so that he fell down dead.

The one who had killed him was now greatly at a loss what to do with the children, for he wanted to get away as fast as he could, for fear of being found in the wood. He was not, however, long in determining that he must leave them in the wood, to the