“I only tapped with the ends of my fingers,” said the boy.
“Ah,” said the woman, “it was louder to me than thunder.” Then, after she had set before them a supper of bread and milk, she rocked her baby, and sang to it a sweet cradle-song about mother Juno and high Olympus.
The children lay down on beds of rushes; and Goldilocks, soothed by the lullaby, fell asleep; but soon awoke, and saw her brother leaning, on tiptoe, over the osier basket. The baby’s face looked, in the moonlight, white and pinched; and its sick hands were pressed together like two withered rose-leaves.
“Let me kiss him,” whispered Goldilocks smiling. But bitter tears rolled down Despard’s cheeks. Drawing his little sword from its sheath, he pricked the baby’s heart till one red drop, the life-drop, stained the steel. The sick baby ceased to breathe.
“O Despard, what have you done?” cried Goldilocks, seizing his arm.
“I know not,” said the boy; “but as my heart moves me, so must I do.”
Hearing voices, the mother awoke, and, as her habit was, turned at once to the cradle. The baby lay there beautiful and still; the pinched look gone, and its furrowed brow smoothed into a baby’s smile. The mother wept bitterly.
“Ah, little stranger,” said she, turning to Despard, “I knew you when I let you in. Why did I open the door for you?”
“Poor mother,” said the boy sorrowfully, “if you had not opened the door, I must have come in by the window.”
But Goldilocks threw her soft arms about the woman’s neck, and comforted her till it was morning, and the “gilded car of day” had risen from the ocean. The tears on her cheeks she dried with her fan, made of magical feathers.