The Lapp woman, Pimpedora, sat and cooked porridge over a blazing fire in the tent, while her son Pimpepanturi sat waiting for the porridge and looking idly at his reindeer shoes. Pimpepanturi was a good-natured boy; but he was stupid, and not a little lazy besides. His father, Hirmu, had wished very much to bring him up as a wizard, but it was of no use. Pimpepanturi thought more about eating and drinking than of learning anything,—whether sorcery or what not.
The Lapp woman turned toward the boy, and said, "Don't you hear something?"
"I hear the fire crackle and the porridge bubble in the pot," answered Pimpepanturi with a long yawn.
"Don't you hear something like a roar out in the autumn night?" asked the Lapp woman again.
"Yes," said Pimpepanturi; "that is a wolf taking some of our reindeer."
"No," said the Lapp woman; "that is Father coming back. He has now been away four winters, but I hear him growling like a wild animal. He must have hurried to have reached home so soon again!"
At that moment Hirmu entered in the semblance of a tiger with the Princess Lindagull hanging from his mouth. Placing her on a heap of moss in the corner of the tent, he quickly regained his own body (replacing his own heart in it now), at the same time calling out, "Mother, what food have you? I have run a long way."
The tiger fell dead upon the moss in the tent. The Lapp woman had nearly fallen into the porridge-pot from fright; but she recognized her husband and promised him a good supper, if he would tell her where he had been these four winters, and what kind of a grand doll he had brought home with him.
"That is too long a story to tell," grumbled the husband. "Take care of our grand doll and give her warm reindeer milk to restore her to life. She is a fine young lady from Persia. She will bring us good fortune."
Princess Lindagull was not dead,—not even wounded. She had only fainted from fright. When she awoke she lay (in her rich clothing of pearls and silver tissue) on a reindeer skin spread over moss, in the Lapp tent. It was dark and cold. The firelight shone on the close walls of the tent and on the Lapp woman, who gave her reindeer milk to drink. Lindagull believed herself to be in death's domain under the earth; and cried because she, so young, should be snatched away from Persia's sun and Ispahan's lovely rose gardens.