A little further on was a goldsmith and all his men working at all sorts of splendid ornaments filled with pearls and diamonds and rubies.
‘What are you doing?’ asked the girl.
‘Making ornaments for the bride of the Dark King against her espousals,’ replied the goldsmiths.
A little further on was a little old hunchback sitting crosslegged, and patching an old torn coat with a heap of other worn-out clothes lying about him.
‘What are you doing?’ asked the maiden.
‘Mending the rags for the girl to go away in who was to have been the bride of the Dark King,’ replied the little old hunchback.
Beyond the room where this was going on was a passage, and at the end of this a door, which she also pushed open. It gave entrance to a room where, on a bed, the Dark King lay asleep.
‘This is the time to apply the stiletto my sisters gave me,’ thought the maiden. ‘I shall never have so good a chance again. They said he was a horrid old enchanter; let me see if he looks like one.’
So saying she took one of the tapers from a golden bracket and held it near his face. It was true enough; his skin was black, his hair was grizly and rough, his features crabbed and forbidding.
‘They’re right, there’s no doubt. It were better the earth were rid of him, as they say,’ she said within herself; and, steeling herself with this reflection, she plunged the knife into his breast.