So he hastened towards it, and stooping down placed his hands upon it, and it was a cloak of golden tissue, curiously wrought with stars, and wrapped in many folds. 'Why! there is a crock of gold for whoever finds it,' they cried, and they set to and ran, so eager were they for the gold.Īnd one of them ran taster than his mate, and outstripped him, and forced his way through the willows, and came out on the other side, and lo! there was indeed a thing of gold lying on the white snow. It slipped down the side of the sky, passing by the other stars in its course, and, as they watched it wondering, it seemed to them to sink behind a clump of willow-trees that stood hard by a little sheep-fold no more than a stone's throw away. There fell from heaven a very bright and beautiful star. Injustice has parcelled out the world, nor is there equal division of aught save of sorrow.'īut as they were bewailing their misery to each other this strange thing happened. 'Truly,' answered his companion, much is given to some, and little is given to others. Yet, after that they had laughed they became sad, for they remembered their poverty, and one of them said to the other, 'Why did we make merry, seeing that life is for the rich, and not for such as we are? Better that we had died of cold in the forest, or that some wild beast had fallen upon us and slain us.' So overjoyed were they at their deliverance that they laughed aloud, and the Earth seemed to them like a flower of silver, and the Moon like a flower of gold. But they put their trust in the good Saint Martin, who watches over all travellers, and retraced their steps, and went warily, and at last they reached the outskirts of the forest, and saw, far down in the valley beneath them, the lights of the village in which they dwelt. Once they sank into a deep drift, and came out as white as millers are, when the stones are grinding and once they slipped on the hard smooth ice where the marsh-water was frozen, and their faggots tell out of their bundles, and they had to pick them up and bind them together again and once they thought that they had lost their way, and a great terror seized on them, for they knew that the Snow is cruel to those who sleep in her arms. On and on went the two Woodcutters, blowing lustily upon their fingers, and stamping with their huge iron-shod boots upon the caked snow. Their feathers were quite stiff with rime, but they did not mind, and they rolled their large yellow eyes, and called out to each other across the forest, 'Tu-whit! Tu-whoo! Tu-whit! Tu-whoo! what delightful weather we are having!' The only people who seemed to enjoy it were the great horned Owls. The little Squirrels, who lived inside the tall fir-tree, kept rubbing each other's noses to keep themselves warm, and the Rabbits curled themselves up in their holes, and did not venture even to look out of doors. If a thing is so, it is so, and at present it is terribly cold.' 'Well, for my own part, said the Woodpecker, who was a born philosopher, 'I don't care an atomic theory for explanations. 'I tell you that it is all the fault of the Government, and if you don't believe me I shall eat you.' The Wolf had a thoroughly practical mind, and was never at a loss for a good argument. Their little pink feet were quite frost-bitten, but they felt that it was their duty to take a romantic view of the situation. 'The Earth is going to be married, and this is her bridal dress,' whispered the Turtle-doves to each other. 'Weet! weet! weet! twittered the green Linnets, 'the old Earth is dead, and they have laid her out in her white shroud.' 'Ugh!' snarled the Wolf as he limped through the brushwood with his tail between his legs, 'this is perfectly monstrous weather. So cold was it that even the animals and the birds did not know what to make of it. The snow lay thick upon the ground, and upon the branches of the trees: the frost kept snapping the little twigs on either side of them, as they passed: and when they came to the Mountain-Torrent she was hanging motionless in air, for the Ice-King had kissed her. It was winter, and a night of bitter cold. Once upon a time two poor Woodcutters were making their way home through a great pine-forest.
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