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'I feel very unhappy about it,' said the husband, 'in case it

should not be all right, and he ought to have said goodbye to

me.'

With this he went on with his dinner, and said, 'Little Marleen,

why do you weep? Brother will soon be back.' Then he asked his

wife for more pudding, and as he ate, he threw the bones under

the table.

Little Marleen went upstairs and took her best silk handkerchief

out of her bottom drawer, and in it she wrapped all the bones

from under the table and carried them outside, and all the time

she did nothing but weep. Then she laid them in the green grass

under the juniper-tree, and she had no sooner done so, then all

her sadness seemed to leave her, and she wept no more. And now

the juniper-tree began to move, and the branches waved backwards

and forwards, first away from one another, and then together

again, as it might be someone clapping their hands for joy. After

this a mist came round the tree, and in the midst of it there was

a burning as of fire, and out of the fire there flew a beautiful

bird, that rose high into the air, singing magnificently, and

when it could no more be seen, the juniper-tree stood there as

before, and the silk handkerchief and the bones were gone.