Page:The Russian story book, containing tales from the song-cycles of Kiev and Novgorod and other early sources.djvu/279

 weapons, and from the kitchen and larder as much bread and other food as the black-browed maid had prepared in a month of Holy Days. Then she said good-bye with tears, and the black-browed maid stood upon the bank as the red ship with sails of fair white linen sailed away from Novgorod and ran out like a full-breasted water-bird upon the bosom of Lake Ilmen.

For a long time the black-browed maid stood shading her eyes with her hand while her white shoulders heaved. Then when the ship could no more be seen, she turned and went back to the kitchen, where she wrapped the widow mother in her cloak of sables; for though the sun shone the mother of Vasily was cold as with the breath of winter from the broad white world.

For two days the red ship sailed onward, and on the second day they met a ship which they spoke in a friendly fashion. "Whither away, Vasily?" asked the sailors, who hailed from Novgorod the Great.

"I am going, my mariners," said Vasily, "upon an unwilling path. Young as I am I am blood-guilty, and I must save my soul; so now I go to pray in Jerusalem city, to worship at the holy of holies, to visit the grave of the Risen Christ, and to bathe in the Jordan river. Tell me, good youths, where is the straight way to the Sacred City?"

Then they told him that the straight way would lead him by a seven weeks' journey, but that the way about would take a year and a half to traverse. But if he took the straight way he would meet with a