But one day the king went hunting, and in the chase he rode so fast that at last he left all his followers behind.
He had reached a deep and lonely glade when suddenly his horse reared under him, and there, standing directly in his path was a beautiful woman dressed all in black. Her hair, too, was black as a raven's wing and her eyes were strangely bright. She stood looking at the king and she did not speak.
The king did not speak either, at first, for there was something in her look that made him ill at ease, even while he wondered at her beauty.
"Who are you?" he said at last; but she made no answer. Then he questioned her whence she came, but she was still silent. But when he asked her if she would go back to the palace with him she nodded her head. So the king took her up before him and rode home with her.
After that the stranger lived at the palace. She spoke little and when she did her voice was hoarse and croaking, but she was very beautiful, and the king loved her and made her his queen.
There were great rejoicings over the marriage; but Goldenhair wept and wept; she feared the stepmother with her black hair and her bright round eyes.
Nevertheless at first the new queen was kind enough to the child. But then, little by little, she began to show the hatred she felt toward her. After a while it was nothing but hard words and harder looks. Above all, she could not bear the sight of the princess's hair, but shuddered every time she saw it. After a while she had a dark hood made, and she obliged the princess to wear it, so that her hair might be hidden.
The child never dared to take off the hood by day, but every evening after the maids had left the scullery she would steal down there with a candle. It was very dark in the scullery, and the mice and beetles scuttled to and fro, but as Goldenhair opened the door she would say,
"_Nimble mice that fear the light, Small, black beetles of the night, Shadows lurking here and there, I pray you fright not Goldenhair._"
Then the mice and the beetles would noiselessly disappear in the cracks; the shadows would shrink into corners, and entering, Goldenhair would take off her hood, and shake down her hair to comb and brush its shining lengths. Then she would bind it up again and cover it with her hood before she went up into the castle.