Page:Russian Wonder Tales.djvu/226

186 to-day is her last maiden feast. But enter and rest. The morning is wiser than the evening."

The old woman put food and drink before her and gave her a place to sleep. Early on the morrow she woke her. "Finist the Falcon," she said, "lives in the fiftieth land from here. Take with thee this golden hammer and these ten little diamond nails. When thou usest them, the hammer will drive the nails of itself. If thou choosest thou mayst give them to his wife for a wedding-gift. Go now with God to the house of my fourth cousin. I am crabbed but she is more ill-tempered than I. However, greet her with politeness and perhaps she will direct thee further. She lives across three times nine lands, beside a deep river."

The girl took the golden hammer and the ten little diamond nails, thanked the old woman and went on her way. She walked a long way and she walked a short way, and at last, when the third pair of iron shoes were worn through, and the third iron staff broken to pieces, and the third stone church-loaf gnawed away, she came, in a dark wood where the tops of the trees touched the sky, to a deep river and on its bank stood a little hut, on whose door-step sat a third old woman, uglier and sourer than the other two put together.