All this time Red Riding Hood was gathering flowers; and when she had picked as many as she could carry, she thought of her grandmother, and hurried to the cottage.  She wondered very much to find the door open; and when she got into the room, she began to feel very ill, and exclaimed, “How sad I feel!  I wish I had not come to-day.”  Then she said, “Good morning,” but received no reply; so she went up to the bed, and drew back the curtains, and there lay her grandmother as she imagined, with the cap drawn half over her eyes and looking very fierce.

“Oh, grandmother, what great ears you have!”

“All the better to hear you with,” was the reply.

“And what great eyes you have!”

“All the better to see you with.”

“And what great hands you have!”

“All the better to touch you with.”

“But, grandmother, what very great teeth you have!”

“All the better to eat you with;” and hardly were the words spoken when the Wolf made a jump out of bed and swallowed down poor Little Red Riding Hood also.

As soon as he had thus satisfied his hunger, he laid himself down again on the bed, and went to sleep and snored very loudly.  A huntsman passing by overheard him, and said, “How loudly that old woman snores!  I must see if anything is the matter.”

So he went into the cottage; and when he came to the bed, he saw the Wolf sleeping in it.

“What! are you here, you old rascal?  I have been looking for you,” exclaimed he; and taking up his gun, he shot the old Wolf through the head.

But it is also said that the story ends in a different manner; for that one day, when Red Riding Hood was taking some presents to her grandmother, a Wolf met her, and wanted to mislead her; but she went straight on, and told her grandmother that she had met a Wolf, who said good-day; but he looked so hungrily out of his great eyes, as if he would have eaten her up had she not been on the high road.

So her grandmother said, “We will shut the door, and then he cannot get in.”

Soon after, up came the Wolf, who tapped, and exclaimed, “I am Little Red Riding Hood, grandmother; I have some roast meat for you.”  But they kept quite quiet, and did not open the door; so the Wolf, after looking several times round the house, at last jumped on to the roof, thinking to wait till Red Riding Hood went home in the evening, and then to creep after her and eat her in the darkness.

The old woman, however, saw what the villain intended.  There stood before the door a large stone trough, and she said to Little Red Riding Hood, “Take this bucket, dear:  yesterday I boiled some meat in this water, now pour it into the stone trough.”  Then the Wolf sniffed the smell of the meat, and his mouth watered, and he wished very much to taste.

At last he stretched his neck too far over, so that he lost his balance, and fell down from the roof, right into the great trough below, and there he was drowned.