cub. And so it happened with a fox, a hare, a boar, and a bear,
till each prince had quite a following of young beasts padding
along behind him.

Towards evening they came to a clearing in the wood, where three
birches grew at the crossing of three roads. The eldest prince
took an arrow, and shot it into the trunk of one of the birch
trees. Turning to his brothers he said:

'Let each of us mark one of these trees before we part on
different ways. When any one of us comes back to this place, he
must walk round the trees of the other two, and if he sees blood
flowing from the mark in the tree he will know that that brother
is dead, but if milk flows he will know that his brother is
alive.'

So each of the princes did as the eldest brother had said, and
when the three birches were marked by their arrows they turned to
their step-sister and asked her with which of them she meant to
live.

'With the eldest,' she answered. Then the brothers separated
from each other, and each of them set out down a different road,
followed by their beasts. And the step-sister went with the
eldest prince.

After they had gone a little way along the road they came into a
forest, and in one of the deepest glades they suddenly found
themselves opposite a castle in which there lived a band of
robbers. The prince walked up to the door and knocked. The