The old man heated the bath-room, carried in what was wanted, and stood outside at the door. But the fox went into the bath-room, shut the door, and began washing the old woman's remains; washed and washed, and kept looking about her all the time. "How's my old woman getting on?" asked the old man. "Beginning to stir!" replied the fox, who then ate up the old woman, collected her bones and piled them up in a corner, and set to work to knead a hasty pudding. The old man waited and waited. Presently he asked; "How's my old woman getting on?" "Resting a bit!" cried the fox, as she gobbled up the hasty pudding. When she had finished it she cried: "Old man! open the door wide." He opened it, and the fox sprang out of the bath-room and ran off home. The old man went into the bath-room and looked about him. Nothing was to be seen but the old woman's bones under the bench--and those picked so clean! As for the oatmeal and the butter, they had all been eaten up. So the old man was left alone and in poverty. This story is evidently a combination of two widely differing tales. The catastrophe we may for the present pass over, but about the opening some few words may be said. The Beanstalk myth is one which is found among so many peoples in such widely distant regions, and it deals with ideas of such importance, that no contribution to its history can be considered valueless. Most remarkable among its numerous forms are those American and Malayo-Polynesian versions of the "heaven-tree" story which Mr. Tylor has brought together in his "Early History of mankind."[382] In Europe it is usually found in a very crude and fragmentary form, having been preserved, for the most part, as the introduction to some other story which has proved more attractive to the popular fancy. The Russian versions are all, as far as I am aware, of this nature. I have already[383] mentioned one of them, in which, also, the Fox plays a prominent part. Its opening words are, "There once lived an old man and an old woman, and they had a little daughter. One day she was eating beans, and she let one fall on the ground. The bean grew and grew, and grew right up to heaven. The old man climbed up to heaven, slipped in there, walked and walked, admired and admired, and said to himself, 'I'll go and fetch the old woman; won't she just be delighted!'" So he tries to carry his wife up the bean stalk, but grows faint and lets her fall; she is killed, and he calls in the Fox as Wailer.[384]