Page:Russian Wonder Tales.djvu/234

192 with her maids and attendants, came walking along the beach, and seeing how the hammer drove the nails by itself, coveted the plaything and desired to buy it.

"It shall be thine," said the girl, "if thou wilt pay me my price."

"And what is the price?" asked the Tzar's daughter.

"Let me watch a second night beside the bed of thy promised husband."

"So be it," said the Tzar's daughter; and that night, after Finist the Falcon had fallen asleep, she put into his hair the enchanted pin, so that he could not waken, and brought the girl to his room. "Give me, now, the golden hammer and the diamond nails," she said, "and thou mayest keep the flies from him till day-dawn."

So that night, too, the merchant's daughter leaned over her beloved through the long dark hours, weeping and crying to him: "Finist my love, my bright Falcon, awake and speak to me! I have come at last to thee! I have journeyed to the fiftieth Tzardom of the eightieth land, and have washed the blood from thy shirt with my tears!" But because of the enchanted pin Finist could not waken,