“It is the truth that you speak,” said the second. “For the other followed the golden ball and fell into the deep pit!” And then they clapped their wings and away they flew. But the poor girl lay in the deep pit all alone, and cried and cried. Suddenly a little door opened—click! clack!—and there was a little grey man no higher than a body’s knee, but with a long white beard that touched the ground. “Hi!” says he to the step-daughter, “and how came you here in the pit?” The girl told him all from beginning to end, and the little man listened to every word. “See, now,” said he, when she had ended her story. “Since you are here in the deep pit and cannot get out, you shall be the queen of all the little men like myself, and we shall serve you, for you are the most beautiful maiden that ever my eyes looked upon.” [Illustration: The Step-daughter follows y^e golden ball in spite of herself. )(] So there the maiden lived for many a long day, and the little man and others like him brought her rich food and wine, and covered all the inside of the pit with jewels and with gold, so that it was most splendid to see. And every day the maiden grew more and more beautiful. One day the young king of that country went a-hunting, and all of his court with him, and four-and-twenty hounds besides. They came riding by the pit where the maiden sat, and there the hounds stopped and began to whimper and to howl, for they knew very well that human flesh and blood was down below. “Listen to the hounds,” says the king; “there is somebody fallen into the pit; now who will go down and bring the unfortunate up again?” At this everybody looked at his neighbor, but nobody said, “I will go.” “Very well,” said the king, “then I myself will go down into the pit, if no one else dares to venture.” So the others lowered the king into the pit, and when he reached the bottom you can guess how he stared and how he wondered; but he had no eyes for the jewels and gold that covered the walls; he had often seen the like of them, but never in all of his days had he beheld such a beauty as the maiden he found there. Then the people above hauled them up together, and the king set her upon a milk-white horse, and then they all rode away to the palace, for that was where he was to take her. There they dressed her in splendid clothes and put a golden crown upon her head, and then she and the king were married. Around her neck he hung a golden chain and a locket, and in the locket was a picture of himself; on her finger he slipped a ring, and within were secret words which nobody but he and she knew. One day the wicked Step-mother was walking in the fields, and the two crows sat on the thorn-tree. “Look,” says the first crow, “yonder goes the beauty.” “Yes,” says the second, “but she is only as a cabbage to a rose when compared to the lass who followed the golden ball down into the pit, and who has married the handsome young king over at the castle yonder.”