Page:RussianFolkTales Afanasev 368pgs.djvu/146

130 seized the lady by the legs with the pinchers, threw her into the forge, and burned her all up. Nothing but her bones were left. When the two tubs of milk came, he emptied them into a pail, collected all the bones, and threw them into the milk. Lo and behold! in three minutes out the lady came, young—yes, alive and young, and so beautiful!

She went and sat down in the barouche and drove home, went up to her husband, and he fixed his eyes on her, and didn't know his wife. "What's the matter? Have you lost your eyesight?" the lady asked. "Don't you see it is I, young and stately; I don't want to have an old husband. Go at once to the smith and ask him to forge you young, and you won't know yourself!"

What could the husband do? Husbands must obey, and so off off he drove.

In the meantime, the smith had returned home and went to the smithy. He went, and there was no sign of his man. He looked for him everywhere, asked everybody, questioned them, but it was no good, and all trace had vanished. So he set to work by himself and began hammering.

Then the husband drove up and said straight out to the smith: "Make a young man of me, please!"

"Are you in your senses, master? How can I make a young man of you?"

"Oh! you know how to!"

"I really have not any idea!"

"Liar! fool! swindler! Why, you turned my old woman into a young one. Do the same by me, otherwise life with her won't be worth living."

"But I have not seen your wife!"

"Never mind!—your young man saw her, and if he understood how to manage the work, surely you, as the craftsman, understand! Set to work quickly, unless you want to taste worse of me and be birched."