But before long, she, like Brynhild, finds out that she has been tricked, and resolves on revenge. Throwing Nikita into a slumber which lasts for twenty-four hours, she has his feet cut off, and sets him adrift in a boat; then she degrades her husband, turning him into a swineherd, and she puts out the eyes of Nikita's brother Timofei. In the course of time the brothers obtain from a Baba Yaga the healing and vivifying waters, and so recover the eyes and feet they had lost. The Witch-Queen is put to death, and Nikita lives happily as the King's Prime Minister. The specific actions of the two waters are described with great precision in this story. When the lame man sprinkles his legs with the Healing Water, they become whole at once; "his legs are quite sound, only they don't move." Then he applies the Vivifying Water, and the use of his legs returns to him. Similarly when the blind man applies the Healing Water to his empty orbits, he obtains new eyes--"perfectly faultless eyes, only he cannot see with them;" he applies the Vivifying Water, "and begins to see even better than before." In a Ryazan variant of the story,[327] Ivan Dearly-Bought, after his legs have been cut off at the knees, and he has been left in a forest, is found by a giant who has no arms, but who is so fleet that "no post could catch him up." The two maimed heroes form an alliance. After a time, they carry off a princess who is suffering from some mysterious disease, and take her to their forest home. She tells them that her illness is due to a Snake, which comes to her every night, entering by the chimney, and sucks away her strength. The heroes seizes the Snake, which takes them to the healing lake, and they are cured. Then they restore the princess, also cured, to her father. Ivan returns to the palace of the Enchantress Queen who had maimed him, and beats her with red-hot iron bars until he has driven out of her all her magic strength, "leaving her only one woman's strength, and that a very poor one." In a Tula variant[328] the wicked wife, who has set her confiding husband to tend her pigs, is killed by the hero. She had put out his eyes, and had cut off the feet of another companion of her husband; in this variant also the Healing Waters are found by the aid of a snake. The supernatural steed which Katoma tamed belongs to an equine race which often figures in the Skazkas. A good account of one of these horses is given in the following story of-- PRINCESS HELENA THE FAIR.[329] _We say that we are wise folks, but our old people dispute the fact, saying: "No, no, we were wiser than you are." But skazkas tell that, before our grandfathers had learnt anything, before their grandfathers[330] were born_--[331] There lived in a certain land an old man of this kind who instructed his three sons in reading and writing[332] and all book learning. Then said he to them: "Now, my children! When I die, mind you come and read prayers over my grave."