lves
at bay, and conquered his desire to sleep; but on the eighth night his
strength failed him, and he fell fast asleep. When he awoke a woman in
black stood beside him, who said: 'You have fulfilled your task very
badly, for you have let the two black wolves damage the Tree of the Sun.
I am the mother of the Sun, and I command you to ride away from here at
once, and I pronounce sentence of death upon you, for you proudly let
yourself be called the Sun-Hero without having done anything to deserve
the name.'

The youth mounted his horse sadly, and rode home. The people all
thronged round him on his return, anxious to hear his adventures, but
he told them nothing, and only to his mother did he confide what had
befallen him. But the old Queen laughed, and said to her son: 'Don't
worry, my child; you see, the Fairy has protected you so far, and the
Sun has found no one to kill you. So cheer up and be happy.'

After a time the Prince forgot all about his adventure, and married a
beautiful Princess, with whom he lived very happily for some time. But
one day when he was out hunting he felt very thirsty, and coming to a
stream he stooped down to drink from it, and this caused his death, for
a crab came swimming up, and with its claws tore out his tongue. He was
carried home in a dying condition, and as he lay on his death-bed
the black woman appeared and said: 'So the Sun has, after all, found
someone, who was not under the Fairy's spell, who has caused your death.
And a similar fate will overtake everyone under the Sun who wrongfully
assumes a title to which he has no right.'

THE WITCH (28)

(28) From the Russian.

Once upon a time there was a peasant whose wife died, leaving him with
two children--twins--a boy and a girl. For some years the poor man
lived on alone with the children, caring for them as best he could; but
everything in the house seemed to go wrong without a woman to look after
it, and at last he made up his mind to marry again, feeling that a
wife would bring peace and order to his household and take care of his
motherless children. So he married, and in the following years several
children were born to him; but peace and order did not come to the
household. For the step-mother was very cruel to the twins, and beat
them, and half-starved them, and constantly drove them out of the house;
for her one idea was to get them out of the way. All day she thought
of nothing but how she should get rid of th