Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/118

94 weariness overtake thee for one moment, then the gods and dæmons will carry me away with them—away from thee." Thus he spoke. Then the woman went and fetched little motes of the feather-grass, and fixed her eyelids open with them, that she might not be overtaken by slumber; and with the stick that her husband had given her she set to work, when night fell, to hew and hew on at the mother-o'-pearl door. Thus she hewed on and on, nor wearied, seven days and seven nights: only the seventh night, the motes of grass having fallen out of one of her eyes so that she could not keep the lid from closing once, in that instant the gods and dæmons prevailed against her husband, and carried him off.

Inconsolable, she set forth to wander after him, crying, "Ah! my beloved husband. My husband of the bird form!" Notwithstanding that she had not slept or left off toiling for seven days and seven nights, she set out, without stopping to take rest, searching for him every where in earth and heaven.

At last, as she continued walking and crying out, she heard his voice answering her from the top of a mountain. And when she had toiled up to the top of the mountain, crying aloud after him, she heard him answer her from the bottom of a stream. When she came down again to the banks of the stream, still calling loudly upon him, there she found him by a