your sister in marriage, and if what you have told me does not turn out true, I will order your heads to be cut off, as a punishment for having deceived me." Soon after he sent messengers to their father, asking him for Mariquita, to become the king's wife. Now, besides the gifts which her brothers had talked of, she was beautiful as the sun, and good.
Her father consented, highly pleased; and sent her to the king, accompanied by her nurse. The latter had a daughter named Estefania, and she and her daughter were very bad-hearted and envious. When they had travelled half-way, Mariquita fell asleep; so Estefania said to her mother, "Can you tell what I am thinking about?" "What is it?" said she to her. "That it would be a good thing if we were to put out Mariquita's eyes, and cast her off in this wooded height (now just then they were passing through a thickly-wooded spot), and as the king does not know which is Mariquita, we will tell him that I am she, and I shall be married to him." "Very well," said the old woman to her; so they did so, but seeing that the eyes were very beautiful, they put them in a glass to keep them.
The maiden passed a dreadful night in the wood, for that night it rained and thundered a great deal; she was half dead with pain and cold. The following day there came a little old man to the wood with his little donkey, to get a load of firewood to take to sell in the town, and with the money to buy a bag of bran for his family, for he could not do any better for them. Instead of getting firewood he found the maiden, and moved by pity he took her to his house on his little donkey. The little old man had three bad-hearted daughters, who treated him very badly. When they saw him coming without firewood and a woman in its stead they began to cry out, "Bad old man, what wilt thou give us to eat to-day? it will be this woman mayhap? She is coming to bring another mouth to the house that we may come to an end once for all by dying of hunger! Of what use is this blind wench who cannot gain her living?" The little old man said to them, "Have patience, daughters; this poor creature was in the wood, and I have brought her out of pity; I am going quickly for the load of firewood, and you shall soon have your dinners. I will leave my share and will give it to her." But his daughters scolded him more and more; for that blind wench he would die of want, and then who was going to work for them? At last he managed to pacify them a little, went for the firewood, sold it, and brought them their food.
