The Queen started and looked at the
leader of the party and leaned toward him. All the others gazed at him
too. Then the King said, "And why did you not bring the child?"
"I'm after telling you we couldn't touch the child," the leader
answered. "I went to take it, and all at once I felt burning hot, and
like I was all dried up into a cinder, and I think they must have
drawn a circle of fire round the child. And then I had that fearful
feeling that you have when you're near a horseshoe nail. There must
have been one somewhere about. You couldn't mistake that feeling--as
if needles of ice were going all through and through you. And so I was
driven back and could get no nearer to the child."
The woman who had been sent to take the place of the child was
standing near the King now, though she could scarcely stand at all,
and her face was all wet with tears. "But they made me go nearer to
the child than that," she cried. "These others pushed me close to her,
so that I'ld take her place and give the child to them. And I felt
burned up like a cinder, too, and then I felt the icy needles, and
then worse than that.
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