Page:The Children Who Followed the Piper.djvu/149

 stones that made the walls of her black house, and it was wonderful to see how quickly the roof went, and then one wall and another wall. All the time her son kept striking at Valentine. His long arms brought the edge of the axe near the youth's flesh, making a wound again and again. But at last Valentine got a stroke at him with his sword. From that time the hag's son began to get smaller and smaller, and the time came when Valentine saw before him only a cross-tempered, black dwarf.

When he had shrunk so that he was below him Valentine smote and struck off the dwarf's head. Then the hag, seeing her son's head cut off, gave a scream and fled away, and the raven went from the broken tree and went flapping after her.

Valentine left John Ball to guard the place while he went to the eagles' nest. The journey was long but he came to the end of it at last. He saw the seven doors of iron, and one after the other he tried to open them. None would open for all his effort. And the nest was too