two saints arrive in heaven, the Lord asks them where they
have been.

"I have been on the earth," replies St. Kasian. "And I happened to
pass by a moujik whose cart had stuck in the mud. He cried out to me,
saying, 'Help me to get my cart out!' But I was not going to spoil my
heavenly apparel."

"I have been on the earth," says St. Nicholas, whose clothes were all
covered with mud. "I went along that same road, and I helped the
moujik to get his cart free."

Then the Lord says, "Listen, Kasian! Because thou didst not assist the
moujik, therefore shall men honor thee by thanksgiving once only every
four years. But to thee, Nicholas, because thou didst assist the
moujik to set free his cart, shall men twice every year offer up
thanksgiving."

"Ever since that time," says the story, "it has been customary to
offer prayers and thanksgiving (_molebnui_) to Nicholas twice a year,
but to Kasian only once every leap-year."[452]

In another story St. Nicholas comes to the aid of an adventurer who
watches beside the coffin of a bewitched princess. There were two
moujiks in a certain village, we are told, one of whom was very rich
and the other very poor. One day the poor man, who was in great
distress, went to the house of the rich man and begged for a loan.

"I will repay it, on my word. Here is Nicholas as a surety," he cried,
pointing to a picture of St. Nicholas.

Thereupon the rich man lent him twenty roubles. The day for repayment
came, but the poor man had not a single copeck. Furious at his loss,
the rich man rushed to the picture of St. Nicholas, crying--

"Why don't you pay up for that pauper? You stood surety for him,
didn't you?"

And as the picture made no reply, he tore it down from the wall, set
it on a cart and drove it away, flogging it as he went, and crying--

"Pay me my money! Pay me my money!"

As he drove past the inn a young merchant saw him, and cried--

"What are you doing, you infidel!"

The moujik explained that as he could not get his money back from a
man who was in his debt, he was proceeding against a surety; whereupon
the merchant paid the debt, and thereby ransomed the picture, which he
hung up in a place of honor, and kept a lamp burning before it. Soon
afterwards an old man offered his services to the merchant, who
appointed him his manager; and from that time all things went well
with the merchant.

But after a while a misfortune befell the land in which he lived, for
"an e