Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/192

168 sheep's paunch with butter, and went her way to the place where her husband lived, and having climbed on to the roof, she looked down upon him through the smoke-hole.

He sat there in his usual place, but nothing was set before him to eat saving only a pan of ashes, which he was dividing with a spoon, saying the while, "This is my portion for to-day;" and "That much I reserve for the portion of to-morrow." Seeing this, the wife threw her paunch of butter hastily through the roof, and then went back to her cave.

Then thought the husband within himself, "Who is there in heaven or earth who would have brought me this butter-paunch but my very wife? who surely has said within herself, 'Perhaps, now that the last cow is slaughtered, my old man is suffering hunger. And as every night she thus supplied him with a butter-paunch, he got up at last and followed her by the track of her feet on the snow till he came to the cave where she dwelt. Nevertheless, seeing the teat cleaving to the side of the cave, he could not resist cutting it off to eat the meat thereof. Then he took to him all the store of butter the woman had laid up and returned home; but the wife, finding her place of refuge was known to him, and that he had taken all her store, left the cave and wandered on farther.

Presently she came to a vast meadow well watered by streams, and herds of hinds grazing amid the grass;