Chapter I

A long time ago, in a village at the edge of the Harz mountains, lived a stone-cutter and his wife, with their children, Eldwald and Rose-Marie.

The children were left much alone at home in the little stone cot on the outskirts of the town, for their father was away all day at the quarry, and their mother sewed at the burgomaster’s house almost all the year round, leaving them each morning when breakfast was over. After setting out their luncheon of black bread and cheese, she would kiss them and say:

“Eat when you are hungry, my children, and _do not go near the woods_.”

Now, there were no fearful beasts or poisonous snakes in the wood. It was a lovely place, with long aisles of green trees carpeted with moss, where all manner of pretty, harmless, woodland creatures loved to play, and all manner of bright flowers and berries grew among the tall ferns and brambles.

Lovers walked the wood unafraid, and the elders of the village were wont to stroll about its edge on sunny Sabbath afternoons.

But still the sweet, green wood held danger for the little ones, and many a home had been bereft because of it. For in the very heart of the wood lived a wicked witch, sometimes seen in the dark, flitting here and there like a shadow. They called her the “Witch o’ Woods,” and more than one brave hunter kept a silver bullet in his box for her. For you must know that only a _silver_ bullet will kill a witch. And though no one had ever been close enough to get a shot at the dreadful creature, the whole village hated and feared her, with just cause, as you shall see.

Whenever a child who was disobedient or naughty strayed into the wood, she changed it into a pretty little rabbit, and hippety-hop it went through a little tunnel which led straight into her den. And as the years went by and every now and then a child would disappear, the villagers would cry, “The Witch o’ Woods!” In time there came to be a song about it, which mothers sang to their babies to a sad, sad tune:

“Stay out of the wood
If you know what’s good.”

This song Rose-Marie knew well, as she did the story of the witch, and she never ventured across the great green meadow lying between their house and the wood, where the geese fed and squawked all day, and where she sometimes must venture for her mother’s five geese when Fritz, the gooseherd, who was old and forgetful, failed to drive them home.

One bright summer morning, Rose-Marie and Eldwald played in front of their home, and all at once a great butterfly flew over their heads, with wings of purple and gold. For a moment it hovered above them, and then settled on a rose-bush not far away. With a cry of joy, Eldwald ran toward it, but it sailed in circles just above his reach, leading him out across the meadow toward the wood.

Despite Rose-Marie’s cries, the boy followed it, and though she ran after him as fast as she could, she reached the edge of the wood to see the bit of purple and gold flitting far down its dim aisles, with Eldwald running after it.

Poor Rose-Marie called and searched for him vainly for some hours, and when it was noon and he had not returned, she hurried to the village and sobbingly broke the news to her mother.

Soon the stone-cutter and a crowd of his neighbors were searching the underbrush of the forest. But though they searched until sunset, and all night torches flared among the trees, no trace of the lost boy could they find.

Now all was changed in Rose-Marie’s home. The mother sat all day at the window gazing with tear-stained eyes at the wood that had swallowed up her child. The father came and went, white and silent, and poor Rose-Marie’s little heart ached and ached for their sorrow, and grieved over her lost playmate. Night after night, she lay awake on her little bed in the loft, thinking of Eldwald and trying to plan some way to find her brother; for she would not believe, as did many of the villagers, that Eldwald was dead, but felt sure that the Witch o’ Woods had turned him into a rabbit, and that he was a prisoner far within the heart of the forest.

As she lay one night watching the stars through her open window, the night wind whispered among the leaves of the vine which wreathed it, and the moon, rising like a great golden shield over the tower of the church, seemed to smile down upon her. A nightingale trilled faintly from the wood.

It was as if some far-away voice called her, and springing up, she slipped on her gown, and, taking her shoes in her hand, stole softly down the ladder and across the stone floor of the kitchen. She could hear her parents’ heavy breathing from the cupboard bed in the corner, and trembled as she took down her father’s knapsack from behind the door, and in the darkness felt for bread and cheese on the shelf nearby. Putting these, with a cup, into the knapsack, she opened the door carefully and stole out into the moonlight.

The flowers slept, drenched in dew, faintly sweet about her. The trees stirred in the soft air, and a bird twittered drowsily in its dream. Far away, a dog barked and an owl hooted. The crickets chirped so loudly in the grasses as she passed that her heart stood still for fear they should waken her mother. They seemed to say, “Whist, whist! Rose-Marie runs away!” And in the meadow pond the frogs took up the cry: “Croak, croak! Rose-Marie runs away!”

Eldwald’s pet cock stirred in his sleep and cried shrill and high, “Cock-a-doodle-doo! Rose-Marie runs away!” And this woke the doves in the house eaves, who murmured peevishly, “Coo-hoo! Who runs away?”

Yet, despite all these alarums, little Rose-Marie ran swiftly on across the meadow, and at last came to the edge of the wood. Turning to look back at the little stone house sleeping so peacefully in the moonlight, the tears stood in her eyes, and stretching her hands out to it, poor Rose-Marie cried, “O, good-by, dear home! Good-by! Good-by!” And thus saying, she pushed on into the darkness of the wood.