Page:Tales and Legends from the Land of the Tzar.djvu/280

264 first. When the winter arrived, the wolf said to his companion,—

"Come, let us find a bear's den in the forest yonder; you can get into it first and hide, while I keep watch at the opening, so that should any hunters happen to see us, they would shoot me first. But mind, as soon as you see that they have killed me and begin stripping off my skin, you must at once run out of the den and jump over my skin. The moment you do that you will be changed into yourself—a man—again."

They found a very suitable den in the forest, into which the bear went, while the wolf lay at the mouth.

They lay there for some time without anything happening to them. At last some hunters came riding along. When they saw the wolf they at once shot him, and then commenced tearing off his skin. At that moment the bear rushed out of his den, and with one leap tumbled right over the wolf's skin and ran off as hard as ever he could, anddown came the peasant, head-over-heels, from his loft in his own hut.

"Oh dear! oh dear!" he cried; "I have broken my back!"

"What is the matter with you, old man?" asked his wife from the top of the stove. "What made you fall off the loft just as if you had been drinking?"

"Oh, you don't understand anything!" began the peasant. "You see the soldier and I changed into wild beasts; he into a wolf, I into a bear, and so we ran about all through the summer and winter. We