Page:Tales and Legends from the Land of the Tzar.djvu/48

32 "How can I be otherwise?" replied she. "I have walked and walked through the whole kingdom with my son, to bind him apprentice to a trade where he need do no work, only eat, drink, sleep, and dress well; but nobody will have him without money."

"Give him to me," said the stranger, "and on this day three years hence you may come and fetch him away. For teaching him I will take nothing; but mind you recognize him again; if you don't, you can come twice more after three years; but if you do not know him then, he must be mine for ever."

The old woman thought this very extraordinary. Was it possible not to know her own child again? However, she was glad that she had at any rate found some one who would take him; she could return to her own country and laugh at the people who had once laughed at her. It was not a very Christian way of looking at things, but, nevertheless, so thought the old woman. In her joy she forgot to ask this stranger who he was and where he lived, but gave him her son and left, to return after three long years to that very spot to claim her boy.

Now this stranger was a sorcerer. All his companions having died, he alone was left with his daughter to perform his magic arts. He kept a school, in which he taught the most wonderful things possible to some dozen young men who boarded with him.

The three years passed away very rapidly, and at last the important day arrived when the old woman was once more to behold her beloved son, and take him home with her. She got up very early, and