Page:The folk-tales of the Magyars.djvu/191

Rh his three servants, and after a long walk strolled into the wood, he became tired and hungry; so he made a fire under a tree, and sat down at it, and fried some bacon; when suddenly he heard some one call out with a trembling voice in the tree: "Oh! how cold I am." The prince looked up, and saw an old woman on the top of the tree shivering. "Come down, old mother," said he. But the old woman said, still shivering with cold, "I'm afraid to come down, because your dogs will kill me; but if you will strike them with this rod, which I throw down to you, they will not touch me." And the good prince, never thinking that the old woman was a witch, struck his servants with the rod, who, without him noticing it, turned into stone. Seeing this, the old woman came down from the tree, and, having prepared a branch as a spit, she caught a toad. She drew it on the spit, and held it to the fire, close to the bacon; and when the prince remonstrated and tried to drive the old woman away, she threw the toad into his face, whereupon the prince fainted. As his servants could not assist him, the witch killed him, cut him up in pieces, salted him, and put him into a cask. The princess was waiting for her husband in great sorrow; but days passed, and still he did not come, and the poor princess bewailed him day and night.

In the meantime, the second prince returned to the tree in which they had stuck their knives; and, finding that his elder brother's knife was covered with blood, started in search of him. When he came to the town, it was again covered with black. He also took lodgings for the night with the old woman, and on inquiring she told him the whole story of the first prince, and also informed him that the town was draped in black because the prince was lost while hunting. The second prince at once came to the conclusion that it could be no one else but his elder brother, and went to the palace. The princess, mistaking him for her husband in her joy, threw her arms round his neck. "Charming princess, I am not your husband," said the prince, "but your husband's younger brother." The princess, however, would not believe him, as she