nd only be in danger
when we go visiting from one little river to another. And as for the
great pike, we will leave him alone in the big river to rage hungrily
up and down. His teeth will soon grow blunt, for there will be nothing
for him to eat."

All the little fish waved their fins and danced in the water when they
heard the wisdom of the ersh's speech. And the ersh and the roach,
and the bream and the perch, and the dace and the gudgeon left the big
river and swam up the little rivers between the green meadows. And
there they began again to live in peace and bring up their little
ones, though the cunning fishermen set nets in the little rivers and
caught many of them on their way. From that time on there have never
been many little fish in the big river.

And as for the monstrous pike, he swam up and down the great river,
lashing the waters, and driving his nose through the waves, but found
no food for his sharp teeth. He had to take to worms, and was caught
in the end on a fisherman's hook. Yes, and the fisherman made a soup
of him--the best fish soup that ever was made. He was a friend of mine
when I was a boy, and he gave me a taste in my wooden spoon.

* * * * *

Then he told them the story of other pike, and particularly of the
pike that was king of a river, and made the little fish come together
on the top of the water so that the young hunter could cross over with
dry feet. And he told them of the pike that hid the lover of the
princess by swallowing him and lying at the bottom of a deep pool, and
how the princess saw her lover sitting in the pike, when the big fish
opened his mouth to snap up a little perch that swam too near his
nose. Then he told them of the big trial in the river, when the fishes
chose judges, and made a case at law against the ersh, and found him
guilty, and how the ersh spat in the faces of the judges and swam
merrily away.

Finally, he told them the story of the Golden Fish. But that is a
long story, and a chapter all by itself, and begins on the next page.

THE GOLDEN FISH.

"This," said old Peter, "is a story against wanting more than enough."

Long ago, near the shore of the blue sea, an old man lived with his
old woman in a little old hut made of earth and moss and logs. They
never had a rouble to spend. A rouble! they never had a kopeck. They
just lived there in the little hut, and the old man caught fish out of
the sea in his old n