The poor have their rights, however, as well as the rich, and even the Snarling Princess was obliged to submit to the disappointment at which she could only grumble.

At one time she resolved never to go into her favourite room again.  But she could not keep her resolution.  Back she went, and some irresistible power always seemed to draw her to the window to irritate herself by the sight of the wretched hovel which belonged to the Three-legged Witch.

At last, however, by constantly snarling and complaining to the king, she induced him to turn the old woman by force out of her cottage.  The king, who was just and upright, did so very unwillingly, and he built her a new and much better cottage elsewhere.

The wood-wife could not resist, but she never put her foot across the threshold of the new house.  Meanwhile the old hovel was swept away as fast as possible, and by the princess’s wish a pretty summer-house was built on the spot where it had stood, and there she and her court ladies were wont to amuse themselves on warm summer evenings to their hearts’ content.

One evening the princess strolled out by herself into the forest.  She had been in several distinct rages; first with her court ladies, secondly with her dressmaker, thirdly with the sky, which, in spite of her wishes for fine weather, had become overcast with clouds.

[Illustration]

In this ill-humour nothing in all the beautiful green forest gave her any satisfaction.  She snarled at the birds because they sang so merrily.  The rustling of the green fir-tops in the evening breeze annoyed her:  “Why should pine-trees have needles instead of leaves?” she asked angrily; and then she grumbled because there were no roses on the juniper bushes.  Still snarling, she wandered on, till she came to a spot where she stood still and silent in sheer amazement.

In an open space there was a circle of grotesque-looking stones, strangely linked together by creeping plants and ferns of curious growth.  And as the Snarling Princess looked at them, it seemed to her that the stones took dwarf-like shapes, and glared about them with weird elfin faces.  The princess seemed rooted to the spot.  An invisible power appeared to draw her towards the group, and to attract her by a beautiful flower, whose calyx opened at her approach.  Unable to resist the impulse, she stepped into the circle and plucked the flower.

No sooner had she done so than her feet took deep root in the earth, her hair stiffened into fir-needles, and her arms became branches.  She was now firmly fixed in the centre of the group of stones, a slender, swaying pine-tree, which creaked and croaked, and snapped and snarled with every gust of wind, as the princess had hardly ever done in her most ill-tempered moments.  And as her limbs stiffened under their magical transformation, the hideous figure of the wood-wife might have been seen hovering round the charmed circle, her arms half changed into bird’s wings, and her hands into claws.  And as the king’s daughter fairly turned into a pine-tree, the wood-wife took the form of an owl, and for a moment rested triumphantly on her branches.  Then with a shrill “Tu-whit! tu-whoo!” it vanished into the forest.