So the Goat stopped and took him on his back, and again they raced over hills, and vales, and drifting sands. And they came to a steep hill and a standstill. Under that steep hill was a mowed meadow, and on that meadow there was a whole town of haystacks. The Goat, and Ram, and Cat stopped to take a rest; it was a cold autumn night. Where were they to get some fire? The Goat and the Ram were still thinking about it, when the Purring Cat got some twigs with which he tied the Goat’s horns, and he told the Goat and the Ram to strike each other’s heads. They hit each other with such a might that sparks flew from their eyes: the twigs crackled. “That’ll do,” said the grey Cat. “Now we will warm ourselves.” No sooner said than he put a haystack on fire. They had not yet gotten warm, when lo! there was an uncalled guest, a Peasant-in-gabardine, Mikháylo Ivánovich. “Let me,” he said, “warm myself and take a rest; I don’t feel well.” “You are welcome, Peasant-in-gabardine, Ant-eater! Good fellow, where do you come from?” “I went to the beehives and had a fight with the peasants; so I am sick now, and I am on my way to the Fox to get cured.” They passed the dark night together: the Bear under a haystack, Purring Váska on the haystack, and the Goat and the Ram by the fire. “Ugh, ugh!” said the White Wolf, “it is not Russian flesh I smell. What manner of people may they be? I must find out!” The Goat and the Ram bleated with fright, and Purring Váska held such discourse: “Listen, White Wolf, Prince of all the wolves! Don’t anger our eldest one, for if he should get at you, it will be your end. Don’t you see his beard? that’s where his strength lies. With his beard he strikes down the animals, but with his horns he only flays them. You had better ask him with due respect to let you have your fun with your younger brother that is lying under the haystack.” So the wolves bowed to the Goat, and surrounded Míshka, and began to tease him. He got up, waxed angry and just grabbed a wolf with each paw; they howled their “Lazarus,” but somehow managed to get away with drooping tails, and they raced as fast as their feet would carry them. In the meanwhile the Goat and the Ram seized the Cat, and ran into the woods, where they once more met some grey wolves. The Cat crawled up to the top of a pine-tree, and the Goat and the Ram got hold of a branch of the pine-tree with their fore legs, and hung down from it. The wolves stood under the tree, grinned and howled, watching the Goat and the Ram. The grey-browed Cat saw that things were very bad, so he began to throw down pine cones upon the wolves, and kept saying: “One wolf! Two wolves! Three wolves! Just a wolf apiece. It is not so long ago I, Purring Váska, ate up two wolves with all their bones, so I am not hungry yet; but you, big brother, have been out a-hunting bears, and you did not get any, so you may have my share!”