She received the King as if she were expecting him , and he saw that she was certainly very beautiful ; but she did not please him , and he could not look at her without a secret feeling of horror . As soon as he had lifted the maiden on to his horse the old woman showed him the way , and the King reached his palace , where the wedding was celebrated . The King had already been married once , and had by his first wife seven children , six boys and one girl , whom he loved more than anything in the world . And now , because he was afraid that their stepmother might not treat them well and might do them harm , he put them in a lonely castle that stood in the middle of a wood . It lay so hidden , and the way to it was so hard to find , that he himself could not have found it out had not a wise-woman given him a reel of thread which possessed a marvellous property : when he threw it before him it unwound itself and showed him the way . But the King went so often to his dear children that the Queen was offended at his absence . She grew curious , and wanted to know what he had to do quite alone in the wood . She gave his servants a great deal of money , and they betrayed the secret to her , and also told her of the reel which alone could point out the way . She had no rest now till she had found out where the King guarded the reel , and then she made some little white shirts , and , as she had learnt from her witch-mother , sewed an enchantment in each of them . And when the King had ridden off she took the little shirts and went into the wood , and the reel showed her the way . The children , who saw someone coming in the distance , thought it was their dear father coming to them , and sprang to meet him very joyfully . Then she threw over each one a little shirt , which when it had touched their bodies changed them into swans , and they flew away over the forest . The Queen went home quite satisfied , and thought she had got rid of her step-children ; but the girl had not run to meet her with her brothers , and she knew nothing of her . The next day the King came to visit his children , but he found no one but the girl . ` Where are your brothers ? ' asked the King . ` Alas ! dear father , ' she answered , ` they have gone away and left me all alone . ' And she told him that looking out of her little window she had seen her brothers flying over the wood in the shape of swans , and she showed him the feathers which they had let fall in the yard , and which she had collected . The King mourned , but he did not think that the Queen had done the wicked deed , and as he was afraid the maiden would also be taken from him , he wanted to take her with him .
But she was afraid of the stepmother , and begged the King to let her stay just one night more in the castle XXXXX the wood .
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