The weaver took the skein, set the warp, and the busy shuttle, drawing the thread after it, began to run hither and thither.
The card strengthened the woof and the thread continued to grow evenly, and without breaking, on the loom; it was as fine as the shift of an archduchess or the linen with which the priest dries the communion-cup at the altar.
When all the thread was used, the weaver gave the cloth to the poor mother, and, as he had understood everything from the settled look of despair on the unhappy woman’s face, he said to her:
“The emperor’s son, who died last year while still an infant, was not wrapped in a finer or softer shroud in his little ebony coffin with silver nails.”
Having folded the cloth, the mother drew from her wasted finger a thin gold ring, all worn with use.
“Good weaver,” she said, “take this ring, my wedding-ring, the only gold I ever possessed.”
The kind weaver-man did not wish to take it; but she said to him:
“Where I am going I shall have no need of a ring; for I feel my Hans’s small arms pulling me into the ground.”
Then she went to the carpenter and said to him:
“Master, get me some oak from the heart of the tree, which will not rot and which the worms will not be able to eat; cut from it five boards and two little boards and make a coffin to these measurements.”