Page:RussianFolkTales Afanasev 368pgs.djvu/230

214 all eternity, and, may-be, his entire life would go by in this misery. From sheer wretchedness he contrived himself this contrivance. In the forest there was a deep pit of which neither end nor bottom could be seen. So he took and closed it up on the top with stakes, and strewed it over with straw. Then he came up to his wife: "My dear wife, you don't know that there is a treasure in the forest. It simply moans and groans with gold, and will not give itself up to me. It said, 'Send for your wife.

"Ha, ha! let us go: I will take it, and you say nothing about it." So they went into the wood. "Sssh, woman, that is hollow ground out of which the treasure comes forth." "Oh, what a fool you are of a peasant, frightened of everything! This is how I run up to it." So she ran up to the straw and was precipitated into the pit.

"Now, off you go," said the peasant; "I am now going to have a rest."

So he had a rest for a month, and a second month, but he soon became melancholy without his squint-eyed wife. So he went into the forest, and he went into the field, and he went to the river, and he could only think of her. "Possibly by now she has become quiet. Possibly I will take her out again." So he took a withy, let it into the ground, and he listened: she was sitting there. He drew it up, looked at it very near, looked very carefully, and in the basket there was a little devil sitting. At this the peasant was frightened, and almost let the cord fall out of his hands.

Then the little devil begged him and cried in his ear: "Do let me go, peasant. Your wife has been torturing and oppressing us. Tell me what to do: I will be your faithful servant. I will this very instant run into the boyárs' palace; I will in an instant cook the grill; by day and night I will knock and drive away the boyárs. You are to declare yourself a doctor to go and to call on