172 COSSACK FAIRY TALES.

and a tattered shirt, for they were very poor people.
They took him to be a runaway soldier, or some
other poor man, but when he had eaten his fill and
clothed himself, he said to them: “I am your Tsar!”
They laughed at him, and again he began to talk
roughly to the people. Then they fell upon him and
thrashed him soundly, and drove him right away.
And he wandered all by himself through the forest
till it was night. Then he laid him down beneath
a tree, and so he passed the night, and rising up very
early, fared on his way straight before him.

At last he came to a third brick-kiln, but he did
not tell the brick-burners there that he was the Tsar.
All he thought of now was how he might reach his
capital. The people here, too, entreated him kindly,
and seeing that his feet were lame and bruised, they
had compassion upon him, and gave him a pair of
very, very old boots. And he asked them: “Do ye
know by which way I can get to the capital?”
They told him, but it was a long, long journey that
would take the whole day.

So he went the way they had told him, and he
went on and on till he came to a little town, and
there the roadside sentries stopped him. “Halt!”
they cried. He halted. ‘Your passport!” +—“I

1 This is a good instance of the modern intrusions in these
ancient kazki. An angel and a passport in the same tale!