Page:Slavonic Fairy Tales.djvu/108

 Rh "I wish to see the Allwise."

Then one of the servants took him and led him in; and pointing with his hand to a child who was riding about the court on a stick, said,—

"There is the Allwise."

The man said wonderingly to himself, "What can this child tell me? But since I am here, I will hear what he has to say."

Then he approached Solomon, and when he came near to him the child stood still on his horse-stick, and asked him what he wanted. The man told him all the story.

The Allwise answered him thus,—

"When you take a maid to wife, you know; when you take a widow, she knows; but when you take a divorced woman—beware of my horse."

The child turned round, struck the man gently with the stick across the feet, and then began again to ride about the court on his stick. Then thought the man to himself:—

"What a fool I am! A grown man, I come to a child to ask him how I shall marry!"

He at once set out to return to the old man to lay before him what had passed with the person to whom he had sent him for advice. When he came to the old man he related in a tone of anger all the circumstances