right thing. Then you can cut off his head and take away his wife."
The King was pleased with the idea. He sent for Emelian and said to him, " Go to I don't know where, and bring me I don't know what. And if you don't, I'll cut off your head."
Emelian went back to his wife and told her what the King had said. The wife reflected.
"Well," she said. " Be it on the King's own head what his courtiers have taught him. We must act with cunning now."
She sat and thought it over for a while; then said to her husband, " You must go a long way to our old grandmother, a peasant soldier's mother, and ask her to help you. She will give you something which you must take straight to the palace and I will be there already. I cannot escape them now; they will take me by force, but only for a short while. If you do what grandmother tells you, you will soon set me free."
And the wife prepared Emelian for the journey and gave him a bundle and a spindle.
