Page:Russian Wonder Tales.djvu/352

302 ye forth. Thou, therefore, Alexé, who art my eldest, take my fatherly blessing, with as much gold and as many troops as thou requirest, and try thy fortune in the quest. If thou dost succeed, thou shalt inherit my Tzardom."

So, boasting much, Tzarevich Alexé took from the treasury a full purse and with fifty thousand soldiers armed with iron lances, set out from the capital. He rode one day, he rode one week, he rode a month, and two and three, asking questions of all he met, until he had passed beyond the borders of his father's Tzardom, but no one had heard of the lost Tzaritza or of the strongholds of Kastchey the Wizard. At length he came, through fen and morass, to a desert land where only earth and sky were to be seen and the sand was as hot as cinder-cakes, and here his host vanished one by one till but ten remained. Beyond the desert was a forest and on the skirt of the forest, in a patch of wild hemp and bramble, he came upon an old gray-beard, a yard tall, sitting on a stone.

"Health to thee, grandfather," said Tzarevich Alexé.

"Health to thee, Tzarevich," replied the old man. "Where doth God carry thee? Art thou come hither to shirk a task or to find one?"