The Story of the Forty-First Brother

” So he turned back and picked up the feather. Then he went on farther and farther, until he came to a clay hut. He went into this clay hut, and there sat an old woman. “Give me a night’s lodging, granny!” said he.––“I have neither bed nor light to offer thee,” said she. Nevertheless he entered the hut and put the feather on the window-corner, and it lit up the whole hut. So he went to sleep. But the old woman ran off to the Tsar, and said to him, “A certain man has come to me and laid a certain feather on the window-sill, and it shines like fire!” Then the Tsar guessed that it was a feather of the bird Zhar, and said to his soldiers, “Go and fetch that man hither!” And the Tsar said to him, “Wilt thou enter my service?”––“Yes,” he replied, “but you must give me all your keys.” So the Tsar gave him all the keys and a hut of his own to live in besides. But one day the Tsar said to his servants, “Boil me now a vat of milk!” So they boiled it. Then he took off his gold ring, and said to the man, “Thou didst get the feather of the bird Zhar, get me also this golden ring of mine out of the vat of boiling milk!”––“Bring hither, then, my faithful horse,” said he, “that he may see his master plunge into the vat of boiling milk and die!” So they brought his horse, and, taking off his clothes, he plunged into the vat, but as he did so the horse snorted so violently that all the boiling milk leaped up in the air and the man seized the ring and gave it back to the Tsar. Now when the Tsar saw that the man had come out of the vat younger and handsomer than ever, he said, “I’ll try and fish up the ring in like manner.” So he flung his ring into the vat of boiling milk and plunged after it to get it. The people waited and waited and wondered and wondered that he was so long about it, and at last they drained off the milk and found the Tsar at the bottom of the vat boiled quite red. Then the man said, “Now, Tsaritsa, thou art mine and I am thine.” And they lived together happily ever afterward.