s big black horse. He
stopped when he came to the hayrick. He was very much surprised at
seeing a beautiful little girl sitting there, crying her eyes out,
while a white lamb frisked this way and that, and played before her,
and now and then ran up to her and licked the tears from her face with
its little pink tongue.

"What is your name," says the fine gentleman, "and why are you in
trouble? Perhaps I may be able to help you."

"My name is Alenoushka, and this is my little brother Vanoushka, whom
I love." And she told him the whole story.

"Well, I can hardly believe all that," says the fine gentleman, "But
come with me, and I will dress you in fine clothes, and set silver
ornaments in your hair, and bracelets of gold on your little brown
wrists. And as for the lamb, he shall come too, if you love him.
Wherever you are there he shall be, and you shall never be parted from
him."

And so Alenoushka took her little brother in her arms, and the fine
gentleman lifted them up before him on the big black horse, and
galloped home with them across the plain to his big house not far from
the river. And when he got home he made a feast and married
Alenoushka, and they lived together so happily that good people
rejoiced to see them, and bad ones were jealous. And the little lamb
lived in the house, and never grew any bigger, but always frisked and
played, and followed Alenoushka wherever she went.

And then one day, when the fine gentleman had ridden far away to the
town to buy a new bracelet for Alenoushka, there came an old witch.
Ugly she was, with only one tooth in her head, and wicked as ever went
about the world doing evil to decent folk. She begged from Alenoushka,
and said she was hungry, and Alenoushka begged her to share her
dinner. And she put a spell in the wine that Alenoushka drank, so that
Alenoushka fell ill, and before evening, when the fine gentleman came
riding back, had become pale, pale as snow, and as thin as an old
stick.

"My dear," says the fine gentleman, "what is the matter with you?"

"Perhaps I shall be better to-morrow," says Alenoushka.

Well, the next day the gentleman rode into the fields, and the old hag
came again while he was out.

"Would you like me to cure you?" says she. "I know a way to make you
as well as ever you were. Plump you will be, and pretty again, before
your husband comes riding home."

"And what must I do?" says Alenoushka, crying to think herself so
ugly.

"You m