After this, the dwarf often visited the young lady, and at length asked her to pour a jug of milk under the kitchen-stairs every morning. But one day the wicked maid ordered a dishful of boiling milk to be poured down very early. Presently the dwarf came weeping to the young lady, saying that his child had been scalded to death by the hot milk. But he knew who was to blame; let her put what she most valued together, and leave the house at once. She did so, and on looking back, she saw the whole house in flames, and in a few hours nothing remained of it and its inhabitants but a heap of ashes. But the lady took another house, married happily, and lived to see her children's children. THE ENVIOUS SISTERS. The Esthonian version of this story (the last in Galland's original translation of the _Thousand_[Pg 10] _and One Nights_, and also found in Germany and elsewhere), is peculiarly fantastic as "The Prince who rescued his Brothers" (Kreutzwald). A young king was very ill, and the soothsayers and magicians could not cure him. One of the magicians, however, at length finding that the king's hands and arms were gold-coloured to the elbows, his legs silver-coloured to the knees, and his belly of the colour of blue glass, told him that he would only be cured by marrying a young bride similarly coloured. Such a bride was discovered in the daughter of one of the king's generals, and she was made queen. The queen was confined of six boys at once; but her elder sister was jealous of her, and availed herself of the services of an old witch, who carried the children away by night, and handed them over to the Old Boy, replacing them with puppies. The queen was confined a second and a third time, each time of three princes, who suffered the same fate, but the nurse contrived to hide one of the last three princes. Nevertheless, the king was now so enraged that he ordered the mother and child to be thrown into the sea on an iron bed for a boat. But it floated away with them; and when the prince was seven weeks old, he had[Pg 11] grown to be a young man, and he began to talk to his mother. Soon afterwards they reached an island, when the prince kicked the bed to pieces, and they went ashore. The prince met an old man, who gave him a hatchet which would build houses, and a wand which would change ants into men; whereupon the prince built and populated a city. The prince then changed himself into a flea, and went to his father's palace. The king had married the wicked sister-in-law, and she was trying to persuade him not to visit the island where the queen and prince had settled, but to visit another country, where he would see more wonderful things. He went; but his son had already removed the wonders to his own island, and he returned disappointed. As the king was still bent on visiting the island, the new queen advised him instead to visit a country where he would see eleven men, coloured like himself.