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When she got home the Queen stood before her Glass and said—

‘Mirror, Mirror on the wall,
Who is fairest of us all?’

and it answered as usual—

‘Queen, thou art fairest here, I hold,
But Snowdrop over the fells,
Who with the seven Dwarfs dwells,
Is fairer still a thousandfold.’

When she heard the Glass speak these words she trembled and quivered with rage, ‘Snowdrop shall die,’ she said, ‘even if it cost me my own life.’ Thereupon she went into a secret room, which no one ever entered but herself, and made a poisonous apple. Outwardly it was beautiful to look upon, with rosy cheeks, and every one who saw it longed for it, but whoever ate of it was certain to die. When the apple was ready she dyed her face and dressed herself like an old Peasant Woman and so crossed the seven hills to the Dwarfs’ home. There she knocked.

Snowdrop put her head out of the window and said, ‘I must not let any one in, the seven Dwarfs have forbidden me.’

‘It is all the same to me,’ said the Peasant Woman. ‘I shall soon get rid of my apples. There, I will give you one.’

‘No; I must not take anything.’

‘Are you afraid of poison?’ said the woman. ‘See, I will cut the apple in half: you eat the red side and I will keep the other.’

Now the apple was so cunningly painted that the red half alone was poisoned. Snowdrop longed for the apple, and when she saw the Peasant Woman eating she could hold out no longer, stretched out her hand and took the poisoned half. Scarcely had she put a bit into her mouth than she fell dead to the ground.

The Queen looked with a fiendish glance, and laughed aloud and said, ‘White as snow, red as blood, and black as ebony,