ABSTRACT
In the long distant age of fable there dwelt, happy and secure, a woodman and his family. The house which he inhabited was built on the outskirts of a great forest, and was well appointed though small and unpretentious. His wife was an excellent woman of good heart and of meager capacity. His mother-in-law, harmless, but not unforgotten, dragged out her old age on the remote side of the forest. His only daughter, whose vivacity seemed to illumine her surroundings, and whose charm was felt by all with equal intensity, had just entered on her thirteenth year; and it is the purpose of this work to describe, with as much exactitude as possible, those circumstances which had so direct a bearing on her life, and which were ultimately the cause of her dissolution.
