“Aha, boaster! And what is it you know? Why, nothing at all except to go out merrymaking and lick your lips there. We’ll soon see which he’ll take first!” While the girls went on scolding like that, they began to freeze in downright earnest. Suddenly they both cried out at once: “Whyever is he so long coming? You know, you have turned quite blue!” Now, a good way off, Frost had begun cracking, snapping his fingers and leaping from fir to fir. To the girls it sounded as if someone were coming. “Listen, Praskóvya! He’s coming at last, with bells, too!” “Get along with you! I won’t listen; my skin is pealing with cold.” “And yet you’re still expecting to get married!” Then they began blowing their fingers. Nearer and nearer came Frost. At length he appeared on the pine, above the heads of the girls, and said to them: “Are ye warm, maidens? Are ye warm, pretty ones? Are ye warm, my darlings?” “Oh, Frost, it’s awfully cold! We are utterly perished! We’re expecting a bridegroom, but the confounded fellow has disappeared.” Frost slid lower down the tree, cracked away more, snapped his fingers oftener than before. “Are ye warm, maidens? Are ye warm, pretty ones?” “Get along with you! Are you blind, that you can’t see our hands and feet are quite dead?” Still lower descended Frost, still more put forth his might and said: “Are ye warm, maidens?” “Into the bottomless pit with you! Out of my sight, accursed one!” cried the girls--and became lifeless forms. Next morning the old woman said to her husband: “Old man, go and get the sledge harnessed; put an armful of hay in it, and take some sheepskin wraps. I dare say the girls are half dead with cold. There is a terrible frost outside! And, mind you, old greybeard, do it quickly!” Before the old man could manage to get a bite, he was out of doors and on his way. When he came to where his daughters were, he found them dead. So he lifted the girls on the sledge, wrapped a blanket round them and covered them up with a bark mat. The old woman saw him from afar, ran out to meet him and called out ever so loud: “Where are my girls?” “In the sledge.” The old woman lifted the mat, undid the blanket and found the girls both dead. Then, like a thunder-storm, she broke out against her husband, abusing him and saying: “What have you done, you old wretch? You have destroyed my daughters, the children of my own flesh, my never-to-be-gazed-on seedlings, my beautiful berries! I will thrash you with the tongs; I will give it you with the stove-rake.” “That’s enough, you old goose! You flattered yourself you were going to get riches, but your daughters were too stiff-necked. How was I to blame? It was you yourself would have it.”