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other five little girls, who were all brought there in the same way; and they will never move till some one pulls the shoes from their feet. Now the old man is waiting till to-night, when he will steal another little girl, and that will make seven, and then he will take them away and kill them. In reality he is a kind of gnome, and very cruel and wicked. He has disguised himself as a shoemaker, that he may steal these little girls. He belongs to a kind which only lives three hundred years, and then they begin to grow small, and gradually become less and less, till at last they vanish quite into air, unless they can steal seven little girls from whose bones they make a dreadful charm, which gives them life for another hundred years. I cannot tell you how many children this old man has killed, for he is nearly two thousand years old; but now the time has come for him to kill seven more children, and if he cannot do it, he will shrivel and shrink, and at last vanish away.”

Then Siegfrid clapped his hands. “That will be capital!” he cried. “I will go and pull the shoes off their feet at once, and then when he comes he will find them gone, and he will not be