Deep within a great forest lived a poor herbalist with his two children and his wife, who was their stepmother. The boy was called Gabel and the girl Mabel. The herbalist had little business once this great famine fell on the land. He could no longer provide much food for his family. With great distress he thought over their current predicament while he lay in bed in the dark of night. He tossed about with his troubled thoughts, groaned, and said to his wife, "What is to become of us? Soon there will be no food to feed the children and there is barely enough now to feed ourselves?"

"I'll tell you what to do," answered the woman, "we will rise early tomorrow and take the children on a little trip out into the woods far from home. There we will light a fire for them and give each of them a small sachel of bread and dried meat strips. We will then return home and go about our business and forget all about them. They will not be able to find their way home and we shall be rid of them."