Now the Wicked Witch had a great longing
to have for her own the Silver Shoes which the girl always wore. Her bees and her crows and her wolves
were lying in heaps and drying up, and she had used up all the power of the
Golden Cap; but if she could only get hold of the Silver Shoes, they would give
her more power than all the other things she had lost. She watched Dorothy
carefully, to see if she ever took off her shoes, thinking she might steal
them. But the child was so proud of her pretty shoes that she never took them
off except at night and when she took her bath. The Witch was too much afraid
of the dark to dare go in Dorothy's room at night to take the shoes, and her
dread of water was greater than her fear of the dark, so she never came near
when Dorothy was bathing. Indeed, the old Witch never touched water, nor ever
let water touch her in any way.
But the wicked creature was very cunning, and she finally thought
of a trick that would give her what she wanted. She placed a bar of iron in the
middle of the kitchen floor, and then by her magic arts made the iron invisible
to human eyes. So that when Dorothy walked across the floor she stumbled over
the bar, not being able to see it, and fell at full length. She was not much
hurt, but in her fall one of the Silver Shoes came off; and before she could
reach it, the Witch had snatched it away and put it on her own skinny foot.
The wicked woman was greatly pleased with the success of her
trick, for as long as she had one of the shoes she owned half the power of
their charm, and Dorothy could not use it against her, even had she known how
to do so.
The little girl, seeing she had lost one of her pretty shoes, grew
angry, and said to the Witch, "Give me back my shoe!"
"I will not," retorted the Witch, "for it is now my
shoe, and not yours."
"You are a wicked creature!" cried Dorothy. "You
have no right to take my shoe from me."
"I shall keep it, just the same," said the Witch,
laughing at her, "and someday I shall get the other one from you,
too."
This made Dorothy so very angry that she picked up the bucket of
water that stood near and dashed it over the Witch, wetting her from head to
foot.
Instantly the wicked woman gave a loud cry of fear, and then, as
Dorothy looked at her in wonder, the Witch began to shrink and fall away.
"See what you have done!" she screamed. "In a
minute I shall melt away."
"I'm very sorry, indeed," said Dorothy, who was truly
frightened to see the Witch actually melting away like brown sugar before her
very eyes.
"Didn't you know water would be the end of me?" asked
the Witch, in a wailing, despairing voice.
"Of course not," answered Dorothy. "How should
I?"
"Well, in a few minutes I shall be all melted, and you will
have the castle to yourself. I have been wicked in my day, but I never thought
a little girl like you would ever be able to melt me and end my wicked deeds.
Look out--here I go!"
With these words the Witch fell down in a brown, melted, shapeless
mass and began to spread over the clean boards of the kitchen floor. Seeing
that she had really melted away to nothing, Dorothy drew another bucket of
water and threw it over the mess. She then swept it all out the door. After
picking out the silver shoe, which was all that was left of the old woman, she
cleaned and dried it with a cloth, and put it on her foot again. Then, being at
last free to do as she chose, she ran out to the courtyard to tell the Lion
that the Wicked Witch of the West had come to an end, and that they were no
longer prisoners in a strange land.