as was needed for supper for two people. When they had eaten, the woman said:—
"Alas! where are our poor children now? They would make a good feast of what we have left here; it was you, William, who wished to lose them. I told you we should repent of it. What are they now doing in the forest? Alas! perhaps the wolves have already eaten them up; you are very inhuman thus to have lost your children."
The fagot-maker grew at last quite out of patience, for she repeated twenty times that he would repent of it, and that she was in the right. He threatened to beat her if she did not hold her tongue. The fagot-maker was, perhaps, more sorry than his wife, but she teased him so he could not endure it. She wept bitterly, saying:—
"Alas! where are my children now, my poor children?"
She said this once so very loud that the children, who were at the door, heard her and cried out all together:—
"Here we are! Here we are!"
She ran immediately to let them in, and said as she embraced them:—
"How happy I am to see you again, my dear children; you are very tired and very hungry, and, my poor Peter, you are covered with mud. Come in and let me clean you."
