"It was money! I had much money: I gave none to the poor, two pots of it did I bury underground. See now, they are going to torment me, to beat me with sticks, to tear me with nails." "Whatever shall I do?" cried the Fiddler. "Perhaps they'll take to torturing me too!" "If you go and sit on the stove behind the chimney-pipe, and don't eat anything for three years--then you will remain safe." The Fiddler hid behind the stove-pipe. Then came fiends,[393] and they began to beat the rich moujik, reviling him the while, and saying: "There's for thee, O rich man. Pots of money didst thou bury but thou couldst not hide them. There didst thou bury them that we might not be able to keep watch over them. At the gate people are always riding about, the horses crush our heads with their hoofs, and in the corn-kiln we get beaten with flails." As soon as the fiends had gone away the moujik said to the Fiddler: "If you get out of here, tell my children to dig up the money--one pot is buried at the gate, and the other in the corn-kiln--and to distribute it among the poor." Afterwards there came a whole roomful of evil ones, and they asked the rich moujik: "What have you got here that smells so Russian?" "You have been in Russia and brought away a Russian smell with you," replied the moujik. "How could that be?" they said. Then they began looking, they found the Fiddler, and they shouted: "Ha, ha, ha! Here's a Fiddler." They pulled him off the stove, and set him to work fiddling. He played three years, though it seemed to him only three days. Then he got tired and said: "Here's a wonder! After playing a whole evening I used always to find all my fiddle-strings snapped. But now, though I've been playing for three whole days, they are all sound. May the Lord grant us his blessing!"[394] No sooner had he uttered these words than every one of the strings snapped. "There now, brothers!" says the Fiddler, "you can see for yourselves. The strings are snapped; I've nothing to play on!" "Wait a bit!" said one of the fiends. "I've got two hanks of catgut; I'll fetch them for you." He ran off and fetched them. The Fiddler took the strings, screwed them up, and again uttered the words: "May the Lord grant us his blessing!" In a moment snap went both hanks. "No, brothers!" said the Fiddler, "your strings don't suit me. I've got some of my own at home; by your leave I'll go for them." The fiends wouldn't let him go. "You wouldn't come back," they say. "Well, if you won't trust me, send some one with me as an escort." The fiends chose one of their number, and sent him with the Fiddler. The Fiddler got back to the village. There he could hear that, in the farthest cottage, a wedding was being celebrated. "Let's go to the wedding!" he cried. "Come along!" said the fiend.