in priest's daughter went strolling in the forest one day,
without having obtained leave from her father or her mother--and
she disappeared utterly. Three years went by. Now in
the village in which her parents dwelt there lived a bold hunter,
who went daily roaming through the thick woods with his dog and
his gun. One day he was going through the forest; all of a sudden
his dog began to bark, and the hair of its back bristled up.
The sportsman looked, and saw lying in the woodland path before
him a log, and on the log there sat a moujik plaiting a bast
shoe. And as he plaited the shoe, he kept looking up at the
moon, and saying with a menacing gesture:--

"Shine, shine, O bright moon!"

The sportsman was astounded. "How comes it," thinks he,
"that the moujik looks like that?--he is still young; but his
hair is grey as a badger's."[265]

He only thought these words, but the other replied, as if
guessing what he meant:--

"Grey am I, being the devil's grandfather!"[266]

Then the sportsman guessed that he had before him no mere
moujik, but a Leshy. He levelled his gun and--bang! he let
him have it right in the paunch. The Leshy groaned, and
seemed to be going to fall across the log; but directly afterwards
he got up and dragged himself into the thickets. After
him ran the dog in pursuit, and after the dog followed the sportsman.
He walked and walked, and came to a hill: in that hill
was a fissure, and in the fissure stood a hut. He entered the
hut--there on a bench lay the Leshy stone dead, and by his
side a damsel, exclaiming, amid bitter tears:--

"Who now will give me to eat and to drink?"

"Hail, fair maiden!" says the hunter. "Tell me whence
thou comest, and whose daughter thou art?"

"Ah, good youth! I know not that myself, any more than if
I had never seen the free light--never known a father and
mother."

"Well, get ready as soon as you can. I will take you back
to Holy Russia."

So he took her away with him, and brought her out of the
forest. And all the way he went along, he cut marks on the
trees. Now this damsel had been carried off by the Leshy, and
had lived in his hut for three years--her clothes were all worn
out, or had got torn off her back, so that she was stark naked
but she wasn't a bit ashamed of that. When they reached the
village, the sportsman began asking whether there was any one
there who had l