"'Pretty maiden! Pretty maiden, be bold, but not too bold.'
"And what do you think she saw there? Why! ever so many pails full of blood.
"So she passed on to a fourth room, and then the bird screamed and screeched after her,—
"'Pretty maiden! Pretty maiden, be bold, but not too bold.'
"'That room was full of heaps of dead bodies, and skeletons of slain women, and the girl got so afraid that she was going to run away out of the house, but she had only got as far as the next room, where the pails of blood stood, when the bird called out to her,—
"'Pretty maiden! Pretty maiden! Jump under the bed, jump under the bed, for now he's coming.'
"She was not slow to give heed to the bird, and to hide under the bed. She crept as far back close to the wall as she could, for she was so afraid she would have crept into the wall itself, had she been able!
"So in came her lover with another girl; and she begged so prettily and so hard he would only spare her life, and then she would never say a word against him, but it was all no good. He tore off all her clothes and jewels, down to a ring which she had on her finger. That he pulled and tore at, but when he couldn't get it off he hacked off her finger, and it rolled away under the bed to the girl who lay there, and she took it up and kept it. Her sweetheart told a little boy who was with him, to creep under the bed and bring out the finger. Yes! he bent down and crept under, and saw the girl lying there; but she squeezed his hand hard, and then he saw what she meant.
"'It lies so far under, I can't reach it,' he cried. 'Let it bide there till to-morrow, and then I'll fetch it out.'
"Early next morning the robber went out, and the boy was left behind to mind the house, and he then went to meet the girl to whom his master was betrothed, and who had come, as you know, by mistake the day before. But before he went, the robber told him to be sure not to let her go into the two farthermost bed-rooms.