THE MAGIC EGG. 247

a

for “twas they. But I see I must go after them
myself, thou art no good at all.”

So off she set and ran and ran, and they knew she
was coming, for the earth quaked and yawned beneath
her. Then the damsel said to Ivan: “I fear me ’tis
all over, for she is coming herself! Look now! T’l
change thee into a stream and myself into a fish—a
perch.” Immediately after the she-dragon came up
and said to the perch: “Oh, oh! so thou wouldst run
away from me,eh!” Then she turned herself into a
pike and began chasing the perch, but every time she
drew near to it, the perch turned its prickly fins
towards her, so that she could not catch hold of it.
So she kept on chasing it and chasing it, but finding
she could not catch it, she tried to drink up the
stream, till she drank so much of it that she burst.

Then the maiden who had become a fish said to
the youth who had become a river: “Now that we
are alive and not dead, go back to thy lord-father
and thy father’s house and see them, and kiss them
all except the daughter of thy uncle, for if thou kiss
that damsel thou wilt forget me, and I shall go to the
land of Nowhere.” So he went home and greeted
them all, and as he did so he thought to himself:
“Why should I not greet my uncle’s daughter like
the rest of them? Why, they'll think me a mere
pagan if I don’t!” So he kissed her, and the moment