now, when they're
no longer necessary to us, we've quite forgotten them!"

"Right you are," replies Ivan, and sets off to fetch them. When he
reaches his old dwelling, he hears a voice saying--

"A bad fellow, that Ivan! now he's rich, he's abandoned us!"

"Who are you?" asks Ivan. "I don't know you a bit."

"Not know us! you've forgotten our faithful service, it seems! Why,
we're your Zluidni!"

"God be with you!" says he. "I don't want you!"

"No, no! we will never part from you now!"

"Wait a bit!" thinks Ivan, and then continues aloud, "Very good, I'll
take you; but only on condition that you bring home my mill-stones for
me."

So he laid the mill-stones on their backs, and made them go on in
front of him. They all had to pass along a bridge over a deep river;
the moujik managed to give the Zluidni a shove, and over they went,
mill-stones and all, and sank straight to the bottom.[242]

There is a very curious Servian story of two brothers, one of whom is
industrious and unlucky, and the other idle and prosperous. The poor
brother one day sees a flock of sheep, and near them a fair maiden
spinning a golden thread.

"Whose sheep are these?" he asks.

"The sheep are his whose I myself am," she replies.

"And whose art thou?" he asks.

"I am thy brother's Luck," she answers.

"But where is my Luck?" he continues

"Far away from thee is thy Luck," she replies.

"But can I find her?" he asks.

"Thou canst; go and seek her," she replies.

So the poor man wanders away in search of her. One day he sees a
grey-haired old woman asleep under an oak in a great forest, who
proves to be his Luck. He asks who it is that has given him such a
poor Luck, and is told that it is Fate. So he goes in search of Fate.
When he finds her, she is living at ease in a large house, but day by
day her riches wane and her house contracts. She explains to her
visitor that her condition at any given hour affects the whole lives
of all children born at that time, and that he had come into the world
at a most unpropitious moment; and she advises him to take his niece
Militsa (who had been born at a lucky time) to live in his house, and
to call all he might acquire her property. This advice he follows, and
all goes well with him. One day, as he is gazing at a splendid field
of corn, a stranger asks him to whom it belongs. In a forgetful moment
he replies, "It is mine," and immediately the whole crop begins to
burn. He runs after