“Thou art sleepy,” he said. “Lie down on the bed.”
As soon as she had lain down and fallen asleep, he took a piece of charcoal from the fire place and wrote on the table, where she would surely see it when she woke up:
“Take my hut, and my bed, and everything I own. I have moved out. There is another piece of bread in the kitchen drawer, but it is mouldy.” Then he left the hut, shut the door carefully so the snow should not blow in and went to the village gate, where there was a public bench; there he sat down.
Presently he heard a great commotion in the village; a lot of people were coming toward the gate where he sat. In their midst walked Hanka, the Fool, with big boots on his feet, an axe in his belt, and a fishing-rod over his shoulder. Everybody was shouting to him:
“Good luck on thy way! Good luck, Hanka! Good luck to thee, brave wayfarer, may all the Saints help thee against the wolves in the forest!”
“Where art thou going, Hanka?” asked the Tsar.
“Far away to the White Sea,” replied the Fool. “We are all starving in the village, so I am going to chop a hole through the ice and catch fish.”
“Alas!” replied the Tsar, suddenly remembering what the Wise Mother Mir had told him. “Thou art a wayfarer now, Hanka, and I should give thee my last gift to atone for my old cruelty to the wayfarer who came to my palace-gate. But I have nothing, nothing left to give, not even a safety-pin!”
“Give me thy blessing, O most Merciful Tsar,” said Hanka the Fool. “Surely with a Tsar’s blessing I could go safely in my long and arduous way. It would keep off the wolves and bears and robbers that attack poor wayfarers in the forest.”
