Now the wretch went for the third time to the door, and knocked and said:
“Open the door, children. Your dear mother has come home, and has brought something for each of you out of the wood.”
The kids cried: “Show us your feet first, that we may be sure you are our mother.”
He put his paws on the window-sill, and when the kids saw that these were white, they believed all he said and opened the door.
Alas! it was the wolf who walked in. They were terrified, and tried to hide themselves. One ran under the table, the second jumped into bed, the third into the oven, the fourth ran into the kitchen, the fifth got into the cupboard, the sixth into the washtub, and the seventh hid in the tall clock-case. But the wolf found them all but one, and made short work of them. He swallowed one after the other, except the youngest one in the clock-case, whom he did not find. When he had satisfied his appetite, he took himself off, and lay down in a meadow outside, where he soon fell asleep.
Not long after the old nanny-goat came back from the woods. Oh, what a terrible sight met her eyes! The house door was wide open, table, chairs, and benches were overturned, the washing-bowl was smashed to atoms, the covers and pillows torn from the bed. She searched all over the house for her children, but nowhere were they to be found. She called them by name, one by one, but no one answered. At last, when she came to the youngest, a tiny voice cried:
“I am here, dear mother, hidden in the clock-case.”
She brought him out, and he told her that the wolf had come and devoured all the others.
You may imagine how she wept over her children.
At last, in her grief, she went out, and the youngest kid ran by her side. When they went into the meadow, there lay the wolf under a tree, making the branches shake with his snores. They examined him from every side, and they could plainly see movements within his distended body.