Page:Slavonic Fairy Tales.djvu/277

 258 "Fie, you unclean thing," cried the terrified peasant, and having violently shut the door he went to bed again; but he could not sleep from fear at the thought of what a terrible creature he had brought home. In the morning he removed all these potatoes to a dunghill.

On the following night Palichka again heard the same voice, crying, "Master, I have brought you some wheat, rye, and barley!" Palichka did not go to see what it was, but trembling with fear like a leaf, he prayed continually: "Deliver us from evil." In the morning he took up a spade and a besom, and having carefully swept the room, he removed all this corn away, so that not even a grain was left behind.

This event gave him a great deal of anxiety; he did not know what to do, and was greatly alarmed lest any of his neighbours should hear about it. But his neighbours soon knew all about the matter; they saw at night something flying to Palichka's house, looking like a burning wisp of straw, and yet it did not set the house on fire; in the day-time they observed a black hen in the yard among the other fowls. Soon a report was spread in the village that gossip Palichka had sold himself to the demon. Some of the more sober of his neighbours shook their heads doubtfully, as from his youth they knew Palichka to be both pious and honest,