"
"Can you not protect me, then?" inquired the sister.
"No," they replied; "for we can only lay aside our swan's feathers for a
quarter of an hour each evening, and for that time we regain our human
form, but afterwards we resume our changed appearance."
Their sister then asked them, with tears, "Can you not be restored
again?"
"Oh, no," replied they; "the conditions are too difficult. For six long
years you must neither speak nor laugh, and during that time you must
sew together for us six little shirts of star-flowers, and should there
fall a single word from your lips, then all your labor will be in vain."
Just as the brothers finished speaking, the quarter of an hour elapsed,
and they all flew out of the window again like Swans.
The little sister, however, made a solemn resolution to rescue her
brothers, or die in the attempt; and she left the cottage, and,
penetrating deep into the forest, passed the night amid the branches of
a tree. The next morning she went out and collected the star-flowers to
sew together. She had no one to converse with and for laughing she had
no spirits, so there up in the tree she sat, intent upon her work.
After she had passed some time there, it happened that the King of that
country was hunting in the forest, and his huntsmen came beneath the
tree on which the Maiden sat.
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