ck-a-doodle-doo_."

Then the robber ran back to his chief.

"Oh! oh!" he cried, "in that house is a horrible woman, who flew at me
and scratched me down the face with her long fingers. Then by the door
stood a man with a knife, who stabbed me in the leg, and out in the
yard lay a monster who struck me a hard blow with a huge club; and up
on the roof sat the judge, who cried, 'Bring me the scoundrel here.'
You may be sure I ran away as fast as I could go."

The robbers never went back to the house, but got away from that place
as quickly as they could. The four musicians liked their new home so
well that they thought no more of going on to the city. The last we
heard of them, they were still there and having happy times together.

_The Straw Ox_[12]

R. NESBIT BAIN

There was once upon a time an old man and an old woman. The old man
worked in the fields as a pitch-burner, while the old woman sat at
home and spun flax. They were so poor that they could save nothing at
all; all their earnings went in bare food, and when that was gone
there was nothing left. At last the old woman had a good idea:

"Look now, husband," cried she, "make me a straw ox, and smear it all
over with tar."

[Footnote 12: From _Cossack Fairy Tales_ (London: George G. Harrap &
Company).]

"Why, you foolish woman!" said he, "what's the good of an ox of that
sort?"

"Never mind," said she, "you just make it. I know what I am about."

What was the poor man to do? He set to work and made the ox of straw,
and smeared it all over with tar.

The night passed away, and at early dawn the old woman took her
distaff, and drove the straw ox out into the steppe to graze, and she
herself sat down behind a hillock, and began spinning her flax, and
cried:

"Graze away, little ox, while I spin my flax. Graze away, little ox,
while I spin my flax!" And while she spun, her head drooped down and
she began to doze, and while she was dozing, from behind the dark wood
and from the back of the huge pines a bear came rushing out upon the
ox and said:

"Who are you? Speak, and tell me!"

And the ox said:

"A three-year-old heifer am I, made of straw and smeared with tar."

"Oh!" said the bear, "stuffed with straw and trimmed with tar, are
you? Then give me of your straw and tar, that I may patch up my ragged
fur again!"

"Take some," said the ox, and the bear fell upon him and began to tear
away at the tar.

He tore and tore, and buried his