‘They are all mine,’ said the little robber girl, seizing one of the nearest.  She held it by the legs and shook it till it flapped its wings.  ‘Kiss it,’ she cried, dashing it at Gerda’s face.  ’Those are the wood pigeons,’ she added, pointing to some laths fixed across a big hole high up on the walls; ’they are a regular rabble; they would fly away directly if they were not locked in.  And here is my old sweetheart Be,’ dragging forward a reindeer by the horn; it was tied up, and it had a bright copper ring round its neck.  ’We have to keep him close too, or he would run off.  Every single night I tickle his neck with my bright knife, he is so frightened of it.’  The little girl produced a long knife out of a hole in the wall and drew it across the reindeer’s neck.  The poor animal laughed and kicked, and the robber girl laughed and pulled Gerda down into the bed with her.

‘Do you have that knife by you while you are asleep?’ asked Gerda, looking rather frightened.

‘I always sleep with a knife,’ said the little robber girl.  ’You never know what will happen.  But now tell me again what you told me before about little Kay, and why you went out into the world.’  So Gerda told her all about it again, and the wood pigeons cooed up in their cage above them; the other pigeons were asleep.  The little robber girl put her arm round Gerda’s neck and went to sleep with the knife in her other hand, and she was soon snoring.  But Gerda would not close her eyes; she did not know whether she was to live or to die.  The robbers sat round the fire, eating and drinking, and the old woman was turning somersaults.  This sight terrified the poor little girl.  Then the wood pigeons said, ’Coo, coo, we have seen little Kay; his sledge was drawn by a white chicken, and he was sitting in the Snow Queen’s sledge; it was floating low down over the trees, while we were in our nests.  She blew upon us young ones, and they all died except we two; coo, coo.’

‘What are you saying up there?’ asked Gerda.  ’Where was the Snow Queen going?  Do you know anything about it?’

’She was most likely going to Lapland, because there is always snow and ice there!  Ask the reindeer who is tied up there.’

‘There is ice and snow, and it’s a splendid place,’ said the reindeer.  ’You can run and jump about where you like on those big glittering plains.  The Snow Queen has her summer tent there, but her permanent castle is up at the North Pole, on the island which is called Spitzbergen!’

‘Oh Kay, little Kay!’ sighed Gerda.

‘Lie still, or I shall stick the knife into you!’ said the robber girl.

In the morning Gerda told her all that the wood pigeons had said, and the little robber girl looked quite solemn, but she nodded her head and said, ‘No matter, no matter!  Do you know where Lapland is?’ she asked the reindeer.

‘Who should know better than I,’ said the animal, its eyes dancing.  ’I was born and brought up there, and I used to leap about on the snowfields.’