he hare is mine!"--"No," said Ivan Golik, "it is mine!" So they
quarrelled over it, but as one had no legs and the other had no arms,
they couldn't hurt one another. At last the armless one said, "What is
the use of our quarrelling? Let us pull up that oak, and whichever of
us pitches it farthest shall have the hare."

"Good!" said Legless.

Then Armless kicked Legless up to the oak, and Legless pulled it up
and gave it to Armless. Then Armless lay down on the ground and kicked
the oak with his feet three miles off. But Legless threw it seven
miles. Then Armless said, "Take the hare and be my elder brother!"

So they became brothers, and made a wagon between them, and fastened
ropes to it, and while Armless dragged it along Legless drove it. On
they went till they came to a town where a Tsar lived. There they went
up to the church, and planted themselves with their wagon in the place
of beggars, and waited till the Tsarivna came up. And the Tsarivna
said to her court lady, "Take this money, and give it to those poor
cripples."

The lady was about to go with it when Legless said, "Nay, but let the
Tsarivna give it to us with her own hands."

Then the Tsarivna took the money from her court lady and gave it to
Legless. But he said to her, "Be not angry, but tell me, now,
wherefore art thou so yellow?"

"God made me so," answered she, and then she sighed.

"No," replied Legless. "I know why thou art so yellow. But I can make
thee once more just as God made thee."

Now the Tsar had heard them speaking, and the words of the cripples
moved him strangely. So he had the armless man and the legless man in
the wagon brought to him, and said to them, "Do as you are able."

But Legless said, "O Tsar! let the Tsarivna speak the truth, and
confess openly how she became so yellow!"

Then the father turned to his daughter, and she confessed and said,
"The serpent flew to me, and drew my blood out of my breast."

"When did he fly to thee?" they asked.

"Just before dawn, when the guards were sleeping, he came flying down
my chimney. In he came flying, and lay down beneath the cushions of my
couch."

"Stop!" cried Legless; "we'll hide in the straw in thy room, and when
the serpent comes flying in again, thou must cough and wake us."

So they hid them in the straw, and just as the guards had ceased
knocking at the doors as they went their rounds, sparks began to flash
beneath the straw roof, and the Tsarivna coughed. They