Well, there and then they dug up the mound, and there was the little
girl lying under the dark earth as if she were asleep.

"O God of mine," says the old merchant, "this is my daughter, my
little pretty one, whom we called Little Stupid." He began to weep
loudly and wring his hands; but the whistle-pipe, playing and
reciting, changed its song. This is what it sang:--

"My sisters took me into the forest to look for the red berries. In
the deep forest they killed poor me for the sake of a silver saucer,
for the sake of a transparent apple. Wake me, dear father, from a
bitter dream, by fetching water from the well of the Tzar."

How the people scowled at the two sisters! They scowled, they cursed
them for the bad ones they were. And the bad ones, the two sisters,
wept, and fell on their knees, and confessed everything. They were
taken, and their hands were tied, and they were shut up in prison.

"Do not kill them," begged the old merchant, "for then I should have
no daughters at all, and when there are no fish in the river we make
shift with crays. Besides, let me go to the Tzar and beg water from
his well. Perhaps my little daughter will wake up, as the
whistle-pipe tells us."

And the whistle-pipe sang again:--

"Wake me, wake me, dear father, from a bitter dream, by fetching water
from the well of the Tzar. Till then, dear father, a blanket of black
earth and the shade of the green birch tree."