He looked at his father’s fields and saw the sheaves standing in them. He began to count the sheaves to see if the harvest had been good, when he saw a cart coming over the field with a peasant sitting in it. He looked closer and saw that it was Vasily, a thief. Vasily stopped by the sheaves and began putting them into the cart. The godson could not endure this and cried aloud, “Father, they are stealing your sheaves!”
The father awoke in the night. “I dreamt that some one was stealing my sheaves,” he said; “I will go and see.” He got upon his horse and rode out.
When he got to the fields he saw Vasily and called aloud for help. Some peasants came up. Vasily was beaten, bound and taken to prison.
The godson then looked towards the town where his godmother lived and saw that she had married a merchant. She was lying in bed and her husband got up to leave her to go to another woman. And the godson cried aloud to his godmother, “Get up! Your husband is going to do something wicked!”
The godmother jumped up, dressed and set out to find her husband. She brought him to shame, beat the other woman and would not take her husband back again.
The godson looked again towards his home and saw his mother lying in the house and that a robber had stolen in and was breaking open a trunk. The mother awoke and cried out in terror. The robber raised his axe, and was about to kill her, but the godson could endure no more; he thrust the sceptre straight into the robber’s temple and killed him on the spot.
VI
He had no sooner slain the robber than the walls rose up again and the room became as before.
The door opened and the godfather entered. He approached the godson, took him by the hand, led him from the throne and said, “You did not obey my commands. You did one wrong thing in opening the forbidden door, another when you mounted the throne and took my sceptre into your hand, and a third wrong, which has added to the evil in the world. Had you sat on the throne an hour longer, you would have ruined half mankind.”
And the godfather once more led the godson up to the throne and he took the sceptre in his hand and the walls rolled asunder.