The devils looked at all the money they had lost. It seemed a pity to lose all that good silver and gold.
"Tear him to pieces, brothers," they cried, "tear him to pieces, eat him and have done!"
The soldier tapped his little pipe on the table.
"First make sure," says he, "who eats whom." And with that he whips out his sack, and, says he, to the devils, who were all gnashing their teeth and making ready to fall on him, "what do you call this?"
"It's a sack," said the devils.
"Is it?" says the soldier. "Then, by the word of God, get into it!"
And the next minute all those devils were tumbling over each other and getting into the sack, squeezing in one on the top of another until the last one had got inside. Then the soldier tied up the sack with a good double knot, hung it on a nail, and lay down to sleep.
In the morning the Tzar sent his servants.
"Go," says the Tzar, "and see what has happened to the soldier who spent the night in the empty palace. If the unclean spirits have made an end of him, then you must sweep up his bones and make all clean."
The servants came, all ready to lament for the brave soldier done to death by the unclean, and there was the soldier walking cheerfully from one room to another, smoking his little pipe.