Page:Slavonic Fairy Tales.djvu/150

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Right and Wrong.
133

daughter to bathe in it, in a day and a night she would be well, as would all, whether lame, deaf, or blind, become healed who bathe in this water."

At this moment the cock crowed, and the Vilas disappeared. On hearing this, the unhappy man, crawling on all fours, dragged himself from under the fir-tree down to the water, washed his eyes in it, and immediately received his sight. Then he filled his vessel with the water, went quickly to the king, whose daughter was ill of leprosy, and said to him, "I am come to heal your daughter; if she will admit me into her presence, she will be made well in a day and a night."

When the king heard this he at once admitted him to the maiden's chamber, and the man gave orders that the princess should be bathed in the water he had brought. And when a day and a night had passed the maiden was well and clean from leprosy. The king was overjoyed: he gave the just brother half his kingdom, and his daughter for a wife; and thus the man became the king's son-in-law and the first man in the land after the king.

This news soon spread over the whole kingdom, and came to the ears of him who always had said that Wrong was better than Right. He thought to himself:

"My brother found his fortune under the fir-tree," and away he went to seek for it there himself. First he took some water in a vessel, then went under the fir-tree