es began dancing. They waved their left hands
and all the guests were squirted with water; they waved their right
hands and the bones flew right into the Tsar's eyes. The Tsar was
wroth, and drove them from court with dishonour.

Now one day the Tsarevich waited his opportunity, ran off home, found
the frog-skin and threw it into a great fire. Soon the Tsarevna missed
her frog-skin, was sore troubled, fell a-weeping, and said to the
Tsarevich: "Alas! Tsarevich Ivan! what hast thou done? If thou hadst
but waited for a little, I should have been thine for ever more, but
now farewell! Seek for me beyond lands thrice-nine, in the Empire of
Thrice-ten, at the house of Koshchei."[19] Then she turned into a
white swan and flew out of the window.

[Footnote 19: Koshchei Bezsmertny, the deathless skeleton.]

Ivan wept bitterly, turned to all four points of the compass and
prayed to God, and went straight before his eyes. He went on and
on,--whether it was near or far, or long or short, matters not; when
there met him an old, old man. "Hail, good youth!" said he, "what dost
thou seek, and whither art thou going?"

The Tsarevich told him all his misfortune. "Alas! Tsarevich Ivan, why
didst thou burn that frog-skin? Thou didst not make, nor shouldst thou
therefore have done away with it. Vasilisa, thy wife, was born wiser
and more cunning than her father; he was therefore angry with her, and
bade her be a frog for three years. Here is a little ball for thee,
follow it whithersoever it rolls."

Ivan thanked the old man, and followed after the ball. He went along
the open plain, and there met him a bear. "Come now!" thought Ivan, "I
will slay this beast." But the bear implored him: "Slay me not,
Tsarevich Ivan, I may perchance be of service to thee somehow."

He went on farther, and lo! behind them came waddling a duck. The
Tsarevich bent his bow; he would have shot the bird, when suddenly she
greeted him with a human voice: "Slay me not, Ivan Tsarevich! I also
will befriend thee!"

Ivan had pity upon her, and went on farther to the blue sea, and
behold! on the beach lay gasping a pike. "Alas! Tsarevich Ivan!"
sighed the pike, "have pity on me and cast me into the sea." And he
cast it into the sea, and went on along the shore.

The ball rolled a short way, and it rolled a long way, and at last it
came to a miserable hut; the hut was standing on hen's legs and
turning round and round. Ivan said to it: "Little hut, little hut!