"I will become an apple-tree with golden and silver apples," says the first; "whoever plucks an apple will immediately burst." Says the second, "I will become a spring--on the water will float two cups, the one golden, the other of silver; whoever touches one of the cups, him will I drown." And the third says, "I will become a golden bed; whoever lies down upon that bed will be consumed with fire." Ivan, in a sparrow's form, overhears all this, and acts as in the preceding story. The three widows die, but their mother, "an old witch," determines on revenge. Under the form of a beggar-woman she asks alms from the retreating brothers. Ivan tenders her a ducat. She seizes, not the ducat, but his outstretched hand, and in a moment whisks him off underground to her husband, an Aged One, whose appearance is that of the mythical being whom the Servians call the Vy. He "lies on an iron couch, and sees nothing; his long eyelashes and thick eyebrows completely hide his eyes," but he sends for "twelve mighty heroes," and orders them to take iron forks and lift up the hair about his eyes, and then he gazes at the destroyer of his family. The glance of the Servian Vy is supposed to be as deadly as that of a basilisk, but the patriarch of the Russian story does not injure his captive. He merely sends him on an errand which leads to a fresh set of adventures, of which we need not now take notice. In a third variant of the story,[84] they are snakes which are killed by the hero, Ivan Koshkin (Cat's son), and it is a Baba Yaga, or Hag, who undertakes to revenge their deaths and those of their wives, her daughters. Accordingly she pursues the three brothers, and succeeds in swallowing two of them. The third, Ivan Koshkin, takes refuge in a smithy, and, as before, the monster's tongue is seized, and she is beaten with hammers until she disgorges her prey, none the worse for their temporary imprisonment. We have seen, in the story about the Chudo-Yudo, that the place usually occupied by the Snake is at times filled by some other magical being. This frequently occurs in that class of stories which relates how three brothers set out to apprehend a trespasser, or to seek a mother or sister who has been mysteriously spirited away. They usually come either to an opening which leads into the underground world, or to the base of an apparently inaccessible hill. The youngest brother descends or ascends as the case may be, and after a series of adventures which generally lead him through the kingdoms of copper, of silver, and of gold, returns in triumph to where his brothers are awaiting him. And he is almost invariably deserted by them, as soon as they have secured the beautiful princesses who accompany him--as may be read in the following (South-Russian) history of-- THE NORKA.[85]