off. They came to a little
thicket, and a vixen popped out. Protius ran her down, Nedviga held
her fast, and the little Tsar milked her and let her go. Then said the
vixen to him, "Thanks to thee, little Tsar Novishny, that thou hast
let me go. Methought thou wouldst tear me in pieces with thy dogs. For
thy kindness I'll give thee a little fox." But to the little fox she
said, "Obey him as though he were thine own father." So he went home,
and they saw him coming from afar, and lo! now he had six guardians,
and yet had come by no harm. "'Tis no good; we shall never do for
him," said the serpent. "Look, now! Make thyself worse than ever, and
say to him, 'I am very ill, my brother, because in another realm, far,
far away, there is a wild boar who ploughs with his nose, and sows
with his ears, and harrows with his tail--and in that same empire
there is a mill with twelve furnaces that grinds its own grain and
casts forth its own meal, and if thou wilt bring me of the meal that
is beneath these twelve furnaces, so that I may make me a cake of it
and eat, my soul shall live.'"--Then her brother said to her,
"Methinks thou art not my sister, but my foe!"--But she replied, "How
can I be thy foe when we two live all alone together in a strange
land?"--"Well, I will get it for thee," said he. For again he believed
in his sister.

So he mounted his steed, took his pack with him, and departed, and he
came to the land where were that boar and that mill she had told him
of. He came up to the mill, tied his horse to it, and entered into it.
And there were twelve furnaces there and twelve doors, and these
twelve doors needed no man to open or shut them, for they opened and
shut themselves. He took meal from beneath the first furnace and went
through the second door, but the dogs were shut in by the doors.
Through all twelve doors he went, and came out again at the first
door, and looked about him, and--there were no dogs to be seen. He
whistled, and he heard his dogs whining where they could not get out.
Then he wept sore, mounted his horse, and went home. He got home, and
there was his sister making merry with the serpent. And no sooner did
the brother enter the hut than the serpent said, "Well, we wanted
flesh, and now flesh has come to us!" For they had just slain a
bullock, and on the ground where they had slain it there sprang up a
whitethorn-tree, so lovely that it may be told of in tales, but
neither imagined nor divined. When