Page:Russian Wonder Tales.djvu/228

188 beside it she saw a Palace with high towers of white stone whose golden tops were glowing like fire. Near the Palace a black serving-wench was washing a piece of cloth in the sea, whose waves it tinged with red, and the girl said: "What is it thou dost cleanse?"

The servant answered: "It is a shirt of Finist the Falcon, who in three days will wed my mistress, but it is so stained with blood that I can by no means make it clean." The girl thought, "It is a garment my beloved wore after he was so cruelly wounded by the knives in my window!" And taking it from the other's hands, she began to weep over it, so that the tears washed away every stain and the shirt was as white as snow.

The black serving-woman took the shirt back to the Tzar's daughter, who asked her how she had so easily cleansed it, and the woman answered that a beautiful maiden, alone on the sea sand, had wept over it till her tears had made it white. "This is, in truth, a remarkable thing," said the Tzar's daughter; "I would see this girl whose tears can wash away such stains." And summoning her maids and nurses and attendants, she went walking along the shore.

Presently she came where the merchant's