Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/515

 Rh "Now I come once more, and then never again."

The third Thursday evening the King said he would watch again; and he set two men to hold him, one under each arm, who were to shake and jog him every time he wanted to fall asleep; and two men he set to watch his Bushy Bride. But when the night wore on, the Bushy Bride began to chaunt and sing, so that his eyes began to wink, and his head hung down on his shoulders. Then in came the lovely lady, and got the brush and brushed her hair, till the gold dropped from it; after that she sent Little Flo out again to see if it would soon be day, and this she did three times. The third time it began to get gray in the east; then she sang—

"Now I come back never more," she said, and went towards the door. But the two men who held the King under the arms clenched his hands together, and put a knife into his grasp; and so, somehow or other, they got him to cut her in her little finger, and drew blood. Then the true bride was freed, and the King woke up, and she told him now the whole story, and how her stepmother and sister had deceived her. So the King sent at once and took her brother out of the pit of snakes, and the adders hadn't done him the least harm, but the stepmother and her daughter were thrown into it in his stead.

And now no one can tell how glad the King was to be rid of that ugly Bushy Bride, and to get a Queen who was