"May you live for many years, O King. We have come to you not for
feasting but for service. Let us, O King, ride out to rescue your
three princesses."
"God give you success, my good young men," says the King. "What are
your names?"
"We are three brothers--Evening, Midnight, and Sunrise."
"What will you have to take with you on the road?"
"For ourselves, O King, we want nothing. Only, do not leave our
mother in poverty, for she is old."
The King sent for the old woman, their mother, and gave her a home in
his palace, and made her eat and drink at his table, and gave her new
boots made by his own cobblers, and new clothes sewn by the very
sempstresses who were used to make dresses for the three daughters of
the King, who were the loveliest princesses in the world, and had been
carried away by the whirlwind. No old woman in Russia was better
looked after than the mother of the three young bogatirs and men of
power, Evening, Midnight, and Sunrise, while they were away on their
adventure seeking the King's daughters.
The young men rode out on their journey. A month they rode together,
two months, and in the third month they came to a broad desert plain,
where there were no towns, no villages, no farms, and not a human
being to be seen. They rode on over the sand, through the rank grass,
over the stony wastes. At last, on the other side of that desolate
plain, they came to a thick forest. They found a path through the
thick undergrowth, and rode along that path together into the very
heart of the forest. And there, alone in the heart of the forest, they
came to a hut, with a railed yard and a shed full of cattle and sheep.
They called out with their strong young voices, and were answered by
the lowing of the cattle, the bleating of the sheep, and the strong
wind in the tops of the great trees.
They rode through the railed yard and came to the hut. Evening leant
from his brown horse and knocked on the window. There was no answer.
They forced open the door, and found no one at all.
"Well, brothers," says Evening, "let us make ourselves at home. Let
us stay here awhile. We have been riding three months. Let us rest,
and then ride farther. We shall deal better with our adventure if we
come to it as fresh men, and not dusty and weary from the long road."
The others agreed. They tied up their horses, fed them, drew water
from the well, and gave them to drink; and then, tired out, they went
into the hut, said their prayers to God, and lay down to sleep with
their weapons close to their hands, like true bogatirs and men of
power.
In the morning the youngest brother. Sunrise, said to the eldest
brother, Evening,--
"Midnight and I are going hunting to-day, and you shall rest here, and
see what sort of dinner you can give us when we come back."
"Very well," says Evening; "but to-morrow I shall go hunting, and one
of you shall stay here and cook the dinner."
Nobody made bones about that, and so Evening stood at the door of the
hut while the others rode off--Midnight on his black horse, and
Sunrise on his horse, white as a summer cloud. They rode off into the
forest, and disappeared among the green trees.
Evening watched them out of sight, and then, without thinking twice
about what he was doing, went out into the yard, picked out the finest
sheep he could see, caught it, killed it, skinned it, cleaned it, and
set it in a cauldron on the stove so as to be ready and hot whenever
his brothers should come riding back from the forest. As soon as that
was done, Evening lay down on the broad bench to rest himself.
He had scarcely lain down before there were a knocking and a rattling
and a stumbling, and the door opened, and in walked a little man a
yard high, with a beard seven yards long[4] flowing out behind him
over both his shoulders. He looked round angrily, and saw Evening, who
yawned, and sat up on the bench, and began chuckling at the sight of
him. The little man screamed out,--
"What are you chuckling about? How dare you play the master in my
house? How dare you kill my best sheep?"