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 one hand, and lifting up his scymitar with the other, he was going to take off her head. The poor gentlewoman, turning about to him, and looking at him with longing eyes, desired him to afford her one little moment to recollect herself. “No, no, said he, recommend thyself to God; and was just ready to strike.

At this very instant there was such a loud knocking at the gate, that Blue Beard made a sudden stop. The gate was opened and presently entered two horsemen, who, drawing their swords, ran directly to Blue Beard. He knew them to be his wife’s brothers, one a dragoon, the other a musqueteer, so that he ran away immediately to save himself; but the two brothers pursued so close that they overtook him before he could get to the steps of the porch, when they ran their swords through his body, and left him dead.

The poor wife was almost as dead as her husband, and had not strength enough to rise and welcome her brothers. Blue Beard had no heirs, and so his wife became mistress of all his estate. She made use of one part of it to marry her sister Anne to a young gentleman who had courted her a long while; another part to buy captains’ commissions for her brothers, and the rest to marry herself to a very worthy gentleman, who made her forget the ill time she had passed with Blue Beard.

TALE III.

Cinderilla; or, The Little Glass Slipper.

HERE was a gentleman who married for his second wife the proudest and most haughty woman ever seen. She had, by a former husband, two daughters of her own, that were indeed exactly like her in all things. He had likewise, by another wife, a young daughter, but of unparelled goodness