Page:Russian Wonder Tales.djvu/121



N a certain far-away Tzardom not in this Empire, there lived a Tzar named Wyslaff, who had three sons: the first Tzarevich Dimitry, the second Tzarevich Wassily, and the third Tzarevich Ivan.

The Tzar had a walled garden, so rich and beautiful that in no kingdom of the world was there a more splendid one. Many rare trees grew in it whose fruits were precious jewels, and the rarest of all was an apple-tree whose apples were of pure gold, and this the Tzar loved best of all.

One day he saw that one of the golden apples was missing. He placed guards at all gates of the garden; but in spite of this, each morning on counting, he found one more apple gone. At length he set men on the wall to watch day and night, and these reported to him that every night there came flying