nd sound? Thank God!"

Then when he gave her the Golden Apples she jumped up from the bed,
pretending that the mere sight of them had cured her.

"Ah, my dear son!" she cried, petting him and caressing him as she used
to when he was a child. "What a hero you are!"

She prepared food and feasted him royally and Vitazko ate and was very
happy that his mother was herself again.

When he could eat no more she took a strong woolen cord and, as if in
play, she said to him:

"Lie down, my son, and let me bind you with this cord as once I bound
your father. Let me see if you are as strong as he was and able to break
the cord."

Vitazko smiled and lay down and allowed his mother to bind him with the
woolen cord. Then he stretched his muscles and burst the cord asunder.

"Ah, you are strong!" his mother said. "But come, let me try again with
a thin silken cord."

Suspecting nothing, Vitazko allowed his mother to bind him hand and foot
with a thin silken cord. Then when he stretched his muscles, the cord
cut into his flesh. So he lay there, helpless as an infant.

"Sharkan! Sharkan!" the mother called.

The dragon rushed in with a sword, cut off Vitazko's head, and hacked
his body into small pieces. He picked out Vitazko's heart and hung it by
a string from a beam in the ceiling.

Then the woman gathered together the pieces of her son's body, tied them
in a bundle, and fastened the bundle on Tatosh who was still waiting
below in the courtyard.

"You carried him when he was alive," she said. "Take him now that he's
dead--I don't care where."

Tatosh rose on the wind and flew home to St. Nedyelka.

The old wise woman who knew already what had happened was waiting for
him. She took the pieces of the body from the bundle and washed them in
the Water of Death. Then she arranged them piece by piece as they should
be and they grew together until the wounds disappeared and there were
not even any scars left. After that she sprinkled the body with the
Water of Life and, lo, life returned to Vitazko and he stood up, well
and healthy.

"Ah," he said, rubbing his eyes, "I've been asleep, haven't I?"

"Yes," Nedyelka said, "and but for me you would never have wakened. How
do you feel, my son?"

"All right," Vitazko said, "except a little strange as if I had no
heart."

"You have none," Nedyelka told him. "Your heart hangs by a string from a
crossbeam in the castle."

She told him what had befallen him, how his mother h