It was midnight as she stood, wrapped in her black cloak, on the topmost point of the steeple. The folds fluttered and crackled, as you may hear a flag flutter and crackle if you stand by a flagstaff on a tower; but no one noticed it or saw her, for everyone but the watchman was in bed, and _he_ was asleep too, though he was paid to be awake. In the bright moonlight she sailed down to the empty pavement of the High Street, among the dark shadows of the gable-ends. It was winter now and the frost was iron-hard over the whole country. She went quickly through the streets, for she did not care for towns, determining that when the sun rose next day she would be well on her way back to the witch’s castle in the valley. But she was rather tired and wanted a few hours of sleep first. She left the town and flew up this very road and past the mill—so I have heard—till she came to an old deserted cottage that once stood not far from here by the wayside. (There were still a few stones of it left when I was a child, and I used to pass it on my way to school.) The nettle-stalks were all frozen round it as she pushed through the broken door, meaning to lie down and sleep in shelter till morning. She had nothing to fear from the cold, for among the cloak’s other useful qualities was the power of keeping the person inside it perfectly warm. She was exceedingly surprised to see by the moonlight that someone else was in the miserable hovel. A little starving boy was lying on a pile of straw in the corner. His poor face was thin and blue with cold, and he had crept into the hut because it was the only refuge he could find. He had walked all day, begging from door to door, for he had neither home nor friends nor food, and was worn out with fatigue and hunger. He lay, scarcely knowing where he was, for his wits were beginning to go, and when the Princess came in he was very near death. Strange dreams were in his brain. The moon struck brilliantly on a little window in the wall and the bitter cold had covered it with wonderful frost-flowers. It was the last thing he had seen before he closed his eyes, and he seemed to himself to be looking deep into a white forest that had grown up from the panes. Oh, how freezing it was! The forest was all made of frozen ferns and seaweed and feathers, like the white images on the glass. It stretched far, far away in alleys of fantastic sparkling fronds and glittering branches. How thick the strange, beautiful things grew! He had been once told that, if he was a good boy, when he died a white angel would come and take him to a place where he would never be sad or hungry any more. He was not sure that he did not see someone coming to him between the stems of the frozen forest. Perhaps it was the white angel. He tried to sit up, but he was too weak. Poor little man, he had just enough life left in him to see that what he had taken for an angel was a woman in a black cloak.