Page:The Children Who Followed the Piper.djvu/143

WHO FOLLOWED THE PIPER went away, and Golden Hood heard the clatter of his iron shoes as he went back and toward the black house that was beside the bare tree.

Golden Hood made the fire light up again. She put spicewood upon it, and the vapor came out of the cauldron again. She sat on the stool beside the fire and she tended it while she waited for the eagles to come back again.

For a long while she sat by the fire, and then she went from the stool and to the seventh door. She wanted to see how tightly it was shut, and she put her hand against the crack. The nail that the hag's son had put through was sticking there, and the long nail went into the palm of her hand.

Then Golden Hood fell down on the floor of the eagles' nest. She lay there with her red lips parted and her forehead all white and the black tresses of her hair falling around her. She lay there with the sky above her, and the treasures of the world all about her, and with the seven iron doors closed upon her, while the eagles, fly-