Page:Polish Fairy Tales - M. A. Biggs.djvu/143

 Rh about midnight the bear woke up, and threw out a stone into the middle of the room.

But the mouse kept running about, and jingling the keys. And the bear asked:

"Are you alive?"

"I am," replied the girl, from behind the oven.

The bear began to throw stones and billets of wood, thick and fast from the stove, and every time he did so, he asked:

"Are you alive?"

"I am," replied the girl's voice from behind the oven; and the mouse still ran up and down, jingling the keys.

With the dawn the cocks began to crow, but the bear did not wake. The mouse gave up the keys, and ran back to its hole; but the old man's daughter began to walk about the room, and jingled the keys.

At sunrise the bear came off the stove, and said:

"O daughter of the old man! you are blest of heaven! For here was I, a powerful monarch, changed by enchantment into a bear, until some living soul should spend two nights in this hut. And now I shall soon become a man again, and return to my kingdom, taking you for my wife. But before this comes to pass, do you look into my right ear."

The old man's daughter threw back her hair, and looked into the right ear of the bear. And she saw a beautiful country, with millions of people, with high mountains, deep