The Wise Woman | Page 8

knew what it was full of, and every now and
then she thought she heard the howling of its wolves and hy¾nas. And
who could tell but some of them might break from their covert and
sweep like a shadow across the heath? Indeed, it was not once nor
twice that for a moment she was fully persuaded she saw a great beast
coming leaping and bounding through the moonlight, to have her all to
himself. She did not know that not a single evil creature dared set foot
on that heath, or that, if one should do so, it would that instant wither
up and cease. If an army of them had rushed to invade it, it would have
melted away on the edge of it, and ceased like a dying wave.--She even
imagined that the moon was slowly coming nearer and nearer down the
sky, to take her and freeze her to death in her arms. The wise woman,
too, she felt sure, although her cottage looked asleep, was watching her
at some little window. In this, however, she would have been quite
right if she had only imagined enough- namely, that the wise woman
was watching over her from the little window. But after all, somehow,
the thought of the wise woman was less frightful than that of any of her
other terrors, and at length she began to wonder whether it might not
turn out that she was no ogress, but only a rude, ill-bred, tyrannical, yet
on the whole not altogether illmeaning person. Hardly had the
possibility arisen in her mind, before she was on her feet: if the woman
was anything short of an ogress, her cottage must be better than that
horrible loneliness, with nothing in all the world but a stare; and even
an ogress had at least the shape and look of a human being.
She darted round the end of the cottage to find the front. But to her

surprise she came only to another back, for no door was to be seen. She
tried the further end, but still no door! She must have passed it as she
ran--but no--neither in gable nor in side was any to be found!
A cottage without a door!--she rushed at it in a rage and kicked at the
wall with her feet. But the wall was hard as iron, and hurt her sadly
through her gay silken slippers. She threw herself on the heath, which
came up to the walls of the cottage on every side, and roared and
screamed with rage. Suddenly, however, she remembered how her
screaming had brought the horde of wolves and hy¾nas about her in
the forest, and, ceasing at once, lay still, gazing yet again at the moon.
And then came the thought of her parents in the palace at home. In her
mind's eye she saw her mother sitting at her embroidery with the tears
dropping upon it, and her father staring into the fire as if he were
looking for her in its glowing caverns. It is true that if they had both
been in tears by her side because of her naughtiness, she would not
have cared a straw; but now her own forlorn condition somehow helped
her to understand their grief at having lost her, and not only a great
longing to be back in her comfortable home, but a feeble flutter of
genuine love for her parents awoke in her heart as well, and she burst
into real tears--soft, mournful tears--very different from those of rage
and disappointment to which she was so much used. And another very
remarkable thing was that the moment she began to love her father and
mother, she began to wish to see the wise woman again. The idea of her
being an ogress vanished utterly, and she thought of her only as one to
take her in from the moon, and the loneliness, and the terrors of the
forest-haunted heath, and hide her in a cottage with not even a door for
the horrid wolves to howl against.
But the old woman--as the princess called her, not knowing that her
real name was the Wise Woman--had told her that she must knock at
the door: how was she to do that when there was no door? But again
she bethought herself--that, if she could not do all she was told, she
could at least do a part of it: if she could not knock at the door, she
could at least knock--say on the wall, for there was nothing else to
knock upon--and perhaps the old woman would hear her and lift her in
by some window. Thereupon she rose at once to her feet, and picking

up a stone, began to knock on the wall with