Little Wild-Rose

The old man crossed himself and sighed deeply. He searched hither and thither, right and left, but the little girl was nowhere to be found. He hunted through the straw in the hut and on the ground behind it to see if she had fallen down; but if she wasn't there she wasn't, and that ended the matter, for they couldn't stamp her out of the earth.

Oh, heavens, how the old man grieved and wrung his hands in despair. How could he help being startled by such a thing! He had put the child in the trough and seen her after he had laid her in it, and knew exactly where he had left her, and now to be unable to find her just a moment after was quite too bad.

"What could have happened to the little girl? Has the angel of the Lord taken her? Have the elves and wicked gnomes stolen her away? What in the world could have occurred!" said the man, sighing. Somebody had taken her, that was plain. But neither angels nor elves nor wicked gnomes frequented the neighborhood. Now, my good friends, just listen to the amazing event. A vulture or a griffin, whichever it was, but we'll say a griffin, was passing by, and, hearing the child's cries, swooped swiftly down, seized the little one, tucked her under its right wing, soared up into the sky with her, and took her to its eyry to feed its young. After putting her in its nest, the griffin flew off again. But the young birds, instead of eating the little girl, looked kindly at her, gave her some soft bread-crumbs, made a bed for her, and covered her with their wings to protect her from the chill of the morning air.

I must now tell you that in this terrible forest, at the bottom of a well of pure poison, lived a dragon with twelve heads, and this well was not far from the tree in whose top rested the griffin's nest. This horrible dragon never let the little griffins grow up, but as soon as they were ready to fly stretched out two of its fiery heads and put an end to their lives, so that the poor old griffin had never yet, in all its life, been able to see even one of its children fly off.