"Then the old woman began to laugh like a cackling hen, and she laughed so loud and laughed so long that it scared me. I got up and pretended to be going home, but when I had gone a little way I hid behind a big tree, and watched the old woman's antics. She kept on laughing for some time, and then she reached out for her stockings. She found the only one she had left, and put it on. Then she reached around for the other, but failed to find it, because I had it in my pocket. This seemed to puzzle her. She stood up and looked all around for her missing stocking, but it wasn't there. Then she sat down again, pulled off the stocking she had on, and put it on the other foot. "But she still lacked a stocking. This seemed to puzzle the old witch worse than ever. Once more she pulled off the stocking and put it on the other foot, and appeared to be very much astonished because one foot was still bare." "She couldn't 'a' had much sense!" exclaimed Drusilla. "Not about stockings and things like that," said Chickamy Crany Crow. "Well, she sat there, pulling the stocking from one foot and putting it on the other, until she seemed to forget about everything else. I watched her until I got tired, and then I thought I would take her missing stocking and throw it in the quagmire. "The moment I did this, the quagmire began to bubble, and hiss, and roll, and toss and tumble about, and soon it disappeared altogether. A little fog arose when the quagmire sank out of sight, and when this cleared away, there stood the carriage that had brought the beautiful little girl with the golden hair, and the little girl herself was sitting in it, ready to go to her father. But this wasn't all. All around, there were numbers of horses and buggies, and all sorts of bundles and money-purses, and everything that travelers carry along with them. "Well, I got in the carriage with the beautiful little girl, clucked to the horses, and drove to my mother's house. All the horses with saddles, and all the horses hitched to buggies, followed along after us, and there was great rejoicing among the people as we went by." "What became of the old witch?" asked Buster John. "She stayed there, trying to make one stocking do for two feet, until the well dried up, and after that I don't know what became of her." "You ought to have been a young man," said Sweetest Susan, who had been reading fairy stories, "so that you could have married the beautiful girl with golden hair, after rescuing her. Besides, your name would have been in the books." "Oh," answered Chickamy Crany Crow, smiling for the first time, "there are plenty of names in the books that you never hear of; but now, wherever little children get together to play games, you will hear them saying the rhyme that tells a part of my story,-- "'Chickamy, Chickamy Crany Crow, Went to the well to wash her toe, But when she got back her chicken was gone.'" [Illustration: THE GOLDEN-HAIRED, BEAUTIFUL LITTLE GIRL] XV.