Page:Turkish fairy tales and folk tales (1901).djvu/272

 on to each other as if they had been glued. Then she joined another on to the first two and then another till she made out of them two long bars. Then she put a little bone across the two bars, and it stuck fast like the rung of a ladder. She mounted on it, and placed another little bone across a bit higher, and then she mounted on that also, and so she ascended from rung to rung, placing the small bones across as she went along, till she got quite near the top; but then she saw that there was a wide gap between the last rung of her ladder and the door in the roof of the house, and she now had no more bones to make the last rung. She must have lost it on the way. What was she to do now? She bethought her for a while, and then she cut off a finger and placed that between the bars. Sure enough it joined on to and formed the last rung, and mounting on it she entered the door of the house with her child in her arms. There she rested for awhile, gave her child to suck, and sat down herself on the threshold.

When her husband came he was so amazed at what he saw that he could scarce believe his eyes, and there he stood looking at the ladder of bones, the last rung of which was a severed human finger. Fear came upon him lest there should be some evil enchantment about the thing, and he would have turned his back upon the house if God had not put it into his mind