Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/246

 is a three days’ journey. If I don’t come back in seven days, you may give me up altogether.” So saying, she set out at about the speed of a tortoise: at noon she was still within a bow-shot of the cottage, and her guest, who every now and then followed her with her eyes, did not lose sight of her till the close of the day.

Lady Winnebald, now mistress of the kitchen, searched eagerly for some eggs to vary her soup and dry remnant of bread; for seven days she looked into every nook and corner of the house, and examined every bush and hedge about it; but not one solitary egg could she discover. On the eighth day she began to be impatient for the old woman’s return; still more so on the ninth. Almost all her provisions being exhausted, she resolved to wait three days more, after the expiration of which term, in case of the non-appearance of the old lady, she determined to take possession of all her moveables, as of a property abandoned by the lawful owner. The three days passed on; she entered on her self-constituted rights, and in the state of want to which the young mother was reduced, she resolved to exercise her first act of ownership on the hen who so maliciously secreted her eggs: it was condemned, without appeal, to be executed next morning; and lest it should escape meantime, was imprisoned under a large basket.