“Ah!” cried his Wife, “would you then destroy your children?” In vain did her husband set forth to her their great poverty: she would not consent. She was poor, she said. But she was their mother. At last, having considered what a grief it would be to her to have them die of hunger before her eyes, she agreed to her husband’s plan, and went, weeping, to bed.
Hop-o’-My-Thumb had listened to all that they had said, for having heard them, from his bed, talking of family matters, he had risen softly and slipped under his father’s stool, in order to hear without being seen. He then went back to bed, but lay awake the rest of the night, thinking what he should do. He rose early and went to a brook, where he filled his pocket with little white pebbles, and then returned to the house.
Soon after, they all set off, but Hop-o’-My-Thumb did not tell his brothers anything of what he knew. They went into a forest, so thick that they could not see each other at a distance of ten paces. The Wood-cutter began to fell a tree, while the children gathered sticks to make up into bundles. The father and mother, seeing them thus employed, slipped away unnoticed, and then fled rapidly, by a little winding path.
When the children found they were alone, they began to scream and cry with all their strength. Hop-o’-My-Thumb let them cry, knowing well how to get home; for, while walking, he had dropped along the path the little white pebbles which he had in his pockets.
He therefore said to them, “Fear not, brothers, my father and mother have left us here, but I will lead you to the house only follow me.”
They obeyed at once, and he led them home along the same path by which they had come into the forest at first. They did not dare to go into the house, but placed themselves near the door, in order to hear what their father and mother were saying.
Now it had so happened that, just as the Woodcutter and his Wife reached home, the lord of the village had sent them ten crowns, which he had long owed them, and which they had never hoped to obtain. This gave them new life, for the poor creatures were almost dead from hunger.
The Wood-cutter immediately sent his Wife to the butcher’s, where, as it was long since they had eaten anything, she bought three times as much meat as was needed for the supper of two people.
When they were seated at table, the Wife said, “Alas! where now are our poor children? They would make good cheer with what we have left. But it is you who wished to lose them. I always said we should repent it. What are they doing now in the forest? Alas! alas! perhaps the wolves have already eaten them! You were most cruel thus to lose your children.”
The Wood-cutter at last grew impatient, for she repeated more than twenty times that they would repent what they had done, and that she had told him so. He threatened to beat her if she was not silent. The Wood-cutter did not do this because he was less sorry than his Wife, but because her reproaches angered him. His Wife now shed tears, and cried out, “Alas! where are my children, my poor children?”