er, and her eyes flash, and she drives about in a
mortar, beating it with a pestle, and sweeping up her tracks with a
besom, so that you cannot tell which way she has gone."

"And her hut?" said Vanya. He had often heard about it before, but he
wanted to hear about it again.

"She lives in a little hut which stands on hen's legs. Sometimes it
faces the forest, sometimes it faces the path, and sometimes it walks
solemnly about. But in some of the stories she lives in another kind
of hut, with a railing of tall sticks, and a skull on each stick. And
all night long fire glows in the skulls and fades as the dawn rises."

"Now tell us one of the Baba Yaga stories," said Maroosia.

"Please," said Vanya.

"I will tell you how one little girl got away from her, and then, if
ever she catches you, you will know exactly what to do."

And old Peter put down his pipe and began:--

BABA YAGA AND THE LITTLE GIRL WITH THE KIND HEART.

Once upon a time there was a widowed old man who lived alone in a hut
with his little daughter. Very merry they were together, and they used
to smile at each other over a table just piled with bread and jam.
Everything went well, until the old man took it into his head to marry
again.

Yes, the old man became foolish in the years of his old age, and he
took another wife. And so the poor little girl had a stepmother. And
after that everything changed. There was no more bread and jam on the
table, and no more playing bo-peep, first this side of the samovar and
then that, as she sat with her father at tea. It was worse than that,
for she never did sit at tea. The stepmother said that everything that
went wrong was the little girl's fault. And the old man believed his
new wife, and so there were no more kind words for his little
daughter. Day after day the stepmother used to say that the little
girl was too naughty to sit at table. And then she would throw her a
crust and tell her to get out of the hut and go and eat it somewhere
else.

And the poor little girl used to go away by herself into the shed in
the yard, and wet the dry crust with her tears, and eat it all alone.
Ah me! she often wept for the old days, and she often wept at the
thought of the days that were to come.

Mostly she wept because she was all alone, until one day she found a
little friend in the shed. She was hunched up in a corner of the shed,
eating her crust and crying bitterly, when she heard a little noise.
It wa