great palace with a golden roof. Behind it was a big garden of
flowers, that are fair to look at but have no fruit, and before it was
a meadow of fine green grass. And on the meadow was an army of
soldiers drawn up in squares and all dressed alike. And suddenly the
fisherman saw his old woman in the gold and silver dress of a Tzaritza
come stalking out on the balcony with her generals and boyars to hold
a review of her troops. And the drums beat and the trumpets sounded,
and the soldiers cried "Hurrah!" And the poor old fisherman found a
dark corner in one of the barns, and lay down in the straw.

Time went on, and at last the old woman was tired of being Tzaritza.
She thought she was made for something better. And one day she said to
her chamberlain,--

"Find me that ragged old beggar who is always hanging about in the
courtyard. Find him, and bring him here."

The chamberlain told his officers, and the officers told the servants,
and the servants looked for the old man, and found him at last asleep
on the straw in the corner of one of the barns. They took some of the
dirt off him, and brought him before the Tzaritza, sitting proudly on
her golden throne.

"Listen, old fool!" says she. "Be off to your golden fish, and tell it
I am tired of being Tzaritza. Anybody can be Tzaritza. I want to be
the ruler of the seas, so that all the waters shall obey me, and all
the fishes shall be my servants."

"I don't like to ask that," said the old man, trembling.

"What's that?" she screamed at him. "Do you dare to answer the
Tzaritza? If you do not set off this minute, I'll have your head cut
off and your body thrown to the dogs."

Unwillingly the old man hobbled off. He came to the shore, and cried
out with a windy, quavering old voice,--

"Head in air and tail in sea,
Fish, fish, listen to me."

Nothing happened.

The old man thought of his wife, and what would happen to him if she
were still Tzaritza when he came home. Again he called out,--

"Head in air and tail in sea,
Fish, fish, listen to me."

Nothing happened, nothing at all.

A third time, with the tears running down his face, he called out in
his windy, creaky, quavering old voice,--

"Head in air and tail in sea,
Fish, fish, listen to me."

Suddenly there was a loud noise, louder and louder over the sea. The
sun hid itself. The sea broke into waves, and the waves piled
themselves one upon another. The sky and the sea turned