As the cryer passed by, the storks flapped their wings and flew down from the housetops, and took their stand in a row before their houses, along the curbs; and wherever a stork stood before a house a woman came out with a bowl in her hand. When I reached the pastry cook’s shop, the pastry cook’s wife was kneeling on the sidewalk before the five little storks, feeding them gruel out of a bowl with a long spoon. I observed that all along the street women were feeding the storks in the same way; but again I noticed that there were no children.
I walked on, watching in every street the feeding of the storks, and looking out for some sign of the Princess. I observed at last a gilded wooden arm and hand holding a lantern, projecting from the front wall of a house a little in advance; and before this house, at the curb, a single stork was standing, and an old man, one-armed, wearing white hair and beard and dressed in a blue gown with silver stars, was sitting before the stork, feeding it with a long spoon from a bowl in his lap. Around the stork’s neck hung a pearl necklace.
Wondering whether I had ever seen that necklace before, I passed behind the old man, and as I did so the stork fixed its eye on me and ruffled its feathers in agitation. I had no sooner gone by than there was a great fluttering among all the storks, and I observed, coming toward me down the street, a bent old woman, stooping under a bulging bag and holding out what appeared to be a poker with a hook at the end. She was ragged and decrepit, and there was a gleam in her eye which seemed to me to be more of terror than anything.
She gazed intently at the stork with the necklace, and then passed on down the street. All the storks, at sight of her, suddenly flew up on to the housetops, and all the people, or nearly all, went hurriedly indoors. As I turned to follow her with my eyes, I saw that the stork with the necklace was perched up on the ridgepole, and that the old one-armed man was gone.
The Ragpicker Frightens the Men Away with Her Bag
The Ragpicker had reached the next corner, and was about to turn into the street at her right, when a dozen men came hurrying toward her in a group, and she stopped and faced them. They were burly men, and they were plainly angry; they carried cudgels, and one of them carried a rope; they meant to do her harm, without a doubt. They advanced on her, muttering dangerously together, and she stood stock still, waiting. One of the men gave a shout, and they rushed upon her in a body; but quick as a wink the old woman whisked her bag from her shoulder to the ground, and began to open it; and at this the men fell back against each other as if afraid; and as the old woman made again as if to open the bag, the men hesitated, turned about, and actually took to their heels and fled.
The Ragpicker slung her bag upon her back again, turned the corner, and disappeared.
What could be in that bag, I wondered, to make those burly men afraid?
I hurried to the corner, and saw the old woman plodding away toward the end of the street. She did not look around, and I followed her cautiously. She passed beyond the village houses and began to climb a path which wound up the hillside among the rocks.