IVAN THE FOOL AND ST. PETERS FIFE. 223

wise brothers climbed to the very tip-top of the tree
and there sat down, and then Ivan dragged himself
up too, and the millstone after him. He tried to get
up as high as his brothers, but the thin boughs broke
. beneath him, so he had to be content with staying
in the lower part of the tree on the thicker boughs ;
so there he sat, hugging
the millstone in his arms.
Presently some robbers
came along that way, red-
handed from their work,
and they too prepared to
pass the night under the
tree. So they cut them
down firewood, and made
them a roaring fire beneath
a huge cauldron, and in this
cauldron they began to boil

 

their supper. They boiled
and boiled till their mess
of pottage was ready, and then they all sat down
round the cauldron and took out their large ladles,
and were just about to fall to—in fact they were
blowing their food because it was so boiling hot
—when Ivan let his big millstone plump down into
the middle of the cauldron, so that the pottage flew
right into their eyes. The robbers were so terrified