When Janko was safely gone, the king called all his courtiers together and showed them the fox horse.
"See my Golden Horse!" he said. "Isn't it the most beautiful horse in the world!"
"It is! It is!" they all told him.
But one courtier, a little keener than the rest, remarked:
"What a curious tail for a horse to have! It is like a fox's tail!"
At the word fox the false horse changed back into a fox and went scampering off.
"See what you've done with your nonsense!" cried the king. "You have lost me my Golden Horse and now you shall lose your own life!" And he ordered the courtier to be executed at once.
The Fox soon caught up with the real Golden Horse and with Janko and the Golden Maiden who were holding in their arms the Golden Cradle and the Golden Apple-Tree.
"It will never do to give up the Golden Apple-Tree," the Fox said, "for it, too, rightly belongs to the Golden Maiden. I'll have to see again if I can help you."
So when they neared the garden of the Magic Grape-Vine, the Little Fox leaped in the air, turned this way; and that, and lo! you might have thought her the Golden Apple-Tree except that her fruit instead of being round was long and pointed like a fox's head.