to you.

And the Tzar, the little father, he gave the old merchant a glass of
water from his holy well. "But," says he, "when your daughterkin
wakes, bring her to me, and her sisters with her, and also the silver
saucer and the transparent apple."

The old man kissed the ground before the Tzar, and took the glass of
water and drove home with it, and I can tell you he was careful not to
spill a drop. He carried it all the way in one hand as he drove.

He came to the forest and to the flowering mound under the little
birch tree, and there was the shepherd watching with his dogs. The old
merchant and the shepherd took away the blanket of black earth.
Tenderly, tenderly the shepherd used his fingers, until the little
girl, the pretty one, the good one, lay there as sweet as if she were
not dead.

Then the merchant scattered the holy water from the glass over the
little girl. And his daughterkin blushed as she lay there, and opened
her eyes, and passed a hand across them, as if she were waking from a
dream. And then she leapt up, crying and laughing, and clung about her
old father's neck. And there they stood, the two of them, laughing and
crying with joy. And the shepherd could not take his eyes from her,
and in his eyes, too, there were tears.

But the old father did not forget what he had promised the Tzar. He
set the little pretty one, who had been so good that her wicked
sisters had called her Stupid, to sit beside him on the cart. And he
brought something from the house in a coffer of wood, and kept it