"No," he said, "I will do that with threshed straw, and I will not let full ears waste for nothing. I will thresh them first."
So the devil said:
"Say, 'As many soldiers, so many straws there be! With my master's command again a sheaf it shall stand.'"
Iván said this, and the sheaf was as before. And the devil begged him again:
"Let me go now!"
"All right!" Iván caught him on the cart-hurdle, held him down with his hand, and pulled him off the fork. "God be with you!" he said.
The moment he said, "God be with you," the devil bolted through the earth, as a stone plumps into the water, and only a hole was left.
Iván went home, and there he found his second brother. Tarás and his wife were sitting and eating supper. Tarás the Paunch had not calculated right, and so he ran away from his debts and came to his father's. When he saw Iván, he said:
"Iván, feed me and my wife until I go back to trading!"
"All right," he said, "stay with us!"