led to the sea which I rode across on a bridge. The first
thing I saw on the other side of the sea was my bee. There he was in a
field of millet harnessed to a plow. "That's my bee!" I shouted to the
man who was driving him. "Is that so?" the man said, and without any
words he gave me back my bee and handed me a bag of millet to pay for
the plowing. I took the bag and tied it securely on the bee. Then I
unsaddled the rooster and mounted the bee. The rooster, poor thing, was
so tired that I had to take him by the hand and lead him along beside
us._

"Father!" the Princess cried, "did you hear that? He took the rooster by
the hand! Isn't that funny!"

"Umph!" grunted the Tsar, and the first lady-in-waiting whispered:

"Hush! Let the young man finish!"

_Whilst we were crossing the bridge, the string of the bag broke and all
my millet spilled out. When night came I tied the rooster to the bee and
lay down on the seashore to sleep. During the night some wolves came
and killed my bee and when I woke up I found that all the honey had run
out of his body. There was so much honey that it rose up and up until it
reached the ankles of the valleys and the knees of the mountains. I took
a hatchet and swam down to a forest where I found two deer leaping about
on one leg. I shot at the deer with my hatchet, killed them, and skinned
them. With the skins I made two leather bottles. I filled these with the
honey and strapped them over the rooster's back. Then I rode home. I no
sooner arrived home than my father was born. "We must have holy water
for the christening," I said. "I suppose I must go to heaven to fetch
some." But how was I to get there? I thought of my millet. Sure enough
the dampness had made it grow so well that its tops now reached the sky.
So all I had to do was to climb a millet stalk and there I was in
heaven. Up there they had mown down some of my millet which they baked
into a loaf and were eating with boiled milk. "That's my millet!" I
said. "What do you want for it?" they asked me. "I want some holy water
to christen my father who has just been born." So they gave me some holy
water and I prepared to descend again to earth. But on earth there was a
violent storm going on and the wind carried away my millet. So there I
was with no way of getting down. I thought of my hair. It was so long
that when I stood up it covered my ears and when I lay down it reached
all the way to earth. So I pulled out a hair, tied it t