elf."

"No, I shall!"

"No, I shall!"

And they set to work fighting; the dust flew like anything.
They'd have gone on fighting ever so much longer, only the
cocks began to crow. Then both the corpses fell lifeless to
the ground, and the Soldier went on his way homeward in peace,
saying:

"Glory be to Thee, O Lord! I am saved from the wizards!"

Even the possession of arms and the presence of a dog will not always,
it seems, render a man secure from this terrible species of
cut-throat.

THE DOG AND THE CORPSE.[411]

A moujik went out in pursuit of game one day, and took a
favorite dog with him. He walked and walked through woods
and bogs, but got nothing for his pains. At last the darkness of
night surprised him. At an uncanny hour he passed by a graveyard,
and there, at a place where two roads met, he saw standing
a corpse in a white shroud. The moujik was horrified, and knew
not which way to go--whether to keep on or to turn back.

"Well, whatever happens, I'll go on," he thought; and on he
went, his dog running at his heels. When the corpse perceived
him, it came to meet him; not touching the earth with its feet,
but keeping about a foot above it--the shroud fluttering after it.
When it had come up with the sportsman, it made a rush at him;
but the dog seized hold of it by its bare calves, and began a tussle
with it. When the moujik saw his dog and the corpse grappling
with each other, he was delighted that things had turned out so
well for himself, and he set off running home with all his might.
The dog kept up the struggle until cock-crow, when the corpse
fell motionless to the ground. Then the dog ran off in pursuit of
its master, caught him up just as he reached home, and rushed at
him, furiously trying to bite and to rend him. So savage was it,
and so persistent, that it was as much as the people of the house
could do to beat it off.

"Whatever has come over the dog?" asked the moujik's
old mother. "Why should it hate its master so?"

The moujik told her all that had happened.

"A bad piece of work, my son!" said the old woman. "The
dog was disgusted at your not helping it. There it was fighting
with the corpse--and you deserted it, and thought only of saving
yourself! Now it will owe you a grudge for ever so long."

Next morning, while the family were going about the farmyard,
the dog was perfectly quiet. But the