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e course of time the King-Bear arrives to claim them, finds out their hiding-place, digs them up, and carries them off on his back to a distant region where no man lives. During his absence they attempt to escape being carried through the air on the back of a friendly falcon, but the King-Bear sees them, "strikes his head against the earth, and burns the falcon's wings." The twins fall to the ground, and are carried by the King-Bear to his home amid inaccessible mountains. There they make a second attempt at escape, trusting this time to an eagle's aid; but it meets with exactly the same fate as their first trial. At last they are rescued by a bull-calf, which succeeds in baffling all the King-Bear's efforts to recover them. At the end of their perilous journey the bull-calf tells the young prince to cut its throat, and burn its carcase. He unwillingly consents, and from its ashes spring a horse, a dog, and an apple-tree, all of which play important parts in the next act of the drama.[148] In one of the variants of the Water King story,[149] the seizer of the drinking kings' beard is not called the _Morskoi Tsar_ but _Chudo Morskoe_, a Water Chudo, whose name recalls to mind the Chudo Yudo we have already met with.[150] The Prince who is obliged, in consequence of his father's promise, to surrender himself to the Water Giant, falls in love with a maiden whom he finds in that potentate's palace, and who is an enchantress whom the Chudo has stolen. She turns herself into a ring, which he carries about with him, and eventually, after his escape from the Chudo, she becomes his bride. In another story,[151] the being who obtains a child from one of the incautious fathers of the Jephthah type who abound in popular fiction, is of a very singular nature. A merchant is flying across a river on the back of an eagle, when he drops a magic "snuff-box," which had been entrusted to his charge by that bird, and it disappears beneath the waters. At the eagle's command, the crayfish search for it, and bring back word that it is lying "on the knees of an Idol." The eagle summons the Idol, and demands the snuff box. Thereupon the Idol says to the merchant--"Give me what you do not know of at home?" The merchant agrees and the Idol gives him back his snuff-box. In some of the variants of the story, the influence of ideas connected with Christianity makes itself apparent in the names given to the actors. Thus in the "Moujik and Anasta
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