Page:The Yellow Fairy Book (1894).djvu/152

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112
THE NIXY

for the water tore them apart, and when the flood was over they both resumed their own shapes again, but the hunter and the hunter’s wife found themselves each in a strange country, and neither knew what had become of the other.


‘A wave swept the spinning-wheel from the bank’


The hunter determined to become a shepherd, and his wife too became a shepherdess. So they herded their sheep for many years in solitude and sadness.

Now it happened once that the shepherd came to the country where the shepherdess lived. The neighbourhood pleased him, and he saw that the pasture was rich and suitable for his flocks. So he brought his sheep there, and herded them as before. The shepherd and shepherdess became great friends, but they did not recognise each other in the least.