I. How the Bramble Gatherer’s Daughter Went toward Her Fortune

I am called Bird-of-Gold (said the girl, beginning her story), but that name did not belong to me until I was a girl grown. Before that I had no name. In the city where I was born and where I lived I was known as “The bramble gatherer’s child.”

My father was the poorest of all the men of that town. He gathered brambles and thorns in the wilderness and brought them in a bundle to the hut where we lived. Then, while he was gathering another bundle on another day, I would go through the town selling the brambles and thorns for stuff for the people’s fires. My mother I never knew. I grew up with my father, and we two had even[Pg 72] less than the sparrows. I had no playmate nor no friend, and what I got for the thorns and brambles I sold brought us but little to eat.

One day as I passed along the street of the city it came into my mind that I was grown to be a girl. The thought that I should go from the city grew in me from that time. My father would miss me, but he would flourish the better if there was one, and not two, to eat the scanty meal that the price of the brambles and thorns gained for us.

I got for myself the cap and jacket of a boy. Then one morning when my father had gone from the hut and had turned his face to the wilderness and his back to the city, I went out of the door and turned to the wilderness also. I took a direction that would bring me far from where my father had gone. I had dressed myself as a boy, and my thought was that I would come upon a merchant who would let me do service for him, and who, perhaps, would take me on a voyage. And I thought that I might win some fortune for myself, and that then I could return and take my father out of toil and hardship.

[Pg 73]

I came to the wilderness and I went through it. When the sun was halfway in the heavens I came to where there was a road. There was a pillar before me and that pillar had writing upon it. I read what was written there. The words were: They who take the road to the right will come to their fortune at last, and they who take the road to the left will be ever as they have been. When I read that writing I took the road that was to my right.

I went along that road thinking every minute that I should come upon something that would bring me to my fortune. The light faded as I went along, and soon I had to look about for some tree or cave that would give me a shelter for the night. At last I saw a hut and I went toward it. When I came before the broken door I knew the place I had been brought to. It was my father’s hut—the hut I had left that morning. And as I stood before it I saw my father coming from the other side with the bundle of brambles and thorns upon his back. Then I said to myself, “How lying was the writing that said that they[Pg 74] who took the road to their right would come at last to their fortune.”

I went into the hut with my father. In the darkness that was there he did not see that I had on the cap and jacket of a boy. He laid the bundle of brambles and thorns down on the floor while I went to prepare the meal for both of us. And while my father was lighting a fire I took off the cap and jacket of a boy and I put on my girl’s dress.

My father, when he had eaten his meal, said to me, “To-day when I had gathered the brambles and had made them into a bundle I lay with my head on the bundle and went to sleep. I awakened feeling some warmth near where my head lay. I looked to see if perchance fire had come upon the brambles and thorns, and, lo! what I saw laid on the bundle was the egg of a bird. The egg was still warm, and the bird that laid it must have flown as I awakened.”

My father showed me the egg. It was strangely marked and was heavy for its size. I looked at it, and my father said, “Take it to the merchant to-[Pg 75]morrow, and maybe he will give a coin for it, for surely it is remarkable.”

The next day, when my father had gone into the wilderness, I went to the shop of the merchant. I showed him the egg that had the strange markings upon it, and I asked him if he would give me something for it. And when the merchant had taken the egg in his hand he said, “This is something to be shown the King. It is undoubtedly the egg of the Bird of Gold.”

I was greatly stirred when I heard the merchant say this, and I thought that perhaps my fortune would come to me through this egg. I went back to the hut, and in the morning, before my father started off for his br............