“If they go on like this,” thought the peasant, “they’ll end by eating me.”
“Wait a minute, mates,” he said; “I’ll go to the beehives and get you honey.”
“All right,” said the soldiers.
He took his cap and ran out of the cottage.
“Now sit and gnaw logs for honey, accursed brood!” he thought; “and if you don’t like that, try bricks instead, but I’ll not feed you any more!”
And he went away into the deep, dense forest. He walked on for three days and three nights, till, in the evening of the third day, he came to wild thickets, where no human foot had ever trod. Then he sat down on a hillock, looked around him, lifted his left foot and took from under his ankle-straps his kopeck—that same kopeck for which he had suffered so much. He looked at it and said—
“I have suffered many griefs for thee, my kopeck, since first I carried thee in my bosom, to bring down on me the birds of prey. I know that without thee I shall be still more unhappy; but they shall rather tear out my eyes than thou, my kopeck that I have toiled for, shalt go to serve my enemies!”
And he dug a pit and buried his kopeck. Then he lay down on the grave of his kopeck and thought in bitterness of spirit—
“If thou hast no kopeck, lie down in thy coffin; if thou hast a kopeck, drown thee in the river!”
And the peasant sighed heavily, heavily, and he fell down upon the earth and prayed, saying—