Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/193

Rh nor did they flee at her approach, so that she could milk them at will, and once more she could make butter as much as ever she would.

One day it befell that, the memory of her husband coming over her, she said within herself, "Perhaps, now that he will have exhausted all the store of cow-milk-butter, my old man may be suffering hunger; who knows!" So she took a sheep's paunch of the butter made of hind's milk and went to the place where her husband lived. As she looked down upon him through the smoke-hole in the roof, she found him once more engaged sparingly dividing his portions of ashes. So she threw the butter-paunch to him through the smoke-hole and went her way. When she had done this several days, her husband rose and followed her by her track on the snow till he came to where the herd of hinds were grazing. But when he saw so many hinds, he could not resist satisfying his love of meat; only when he had slaughtered many of the hinds, these said one to another, "If we remain here, of a surety we shall all be put to death;" therefore they arose in the night and betook them afar, far off, whither neither the man nor his wife could follow them.

When the wife found her place of refuge was known to her husband, and that he had dispersed her herd of hinds, she left the grassy meadow and wandered on farther.

Presently, a storm coming on, she took shelter in a