The next day the brothers of little fool Ivan again assembled at the Tsar's sports, and little fool Ivan said to them: "Take me with you!"--"Take thee, fool!" said the brothers; "just sit at home and keep the sparrows from the peas instead of a scarecrow! What hast thou to do with it!"--"That's true!" said he, went among the peas, sat down, and scared away the sparrows. But when his brothers had gone, little fool Ivan shuffled off into the open plain, into the wide steppe, and roared with a martial voice, and whistled shrilly with a heroic whistle: "Hi! thou! sivka-burka, vyeshchy kaurka! Stand before me like the leaf before the grass!" And lo! his valiant steed came running, the earth trembled, sparks flew from beneath his prancing hoofs, a fire burned in his eyes, and smoke rolled in clouds from his ears. He said with a human voice: "What dost thou require?" Little fool Ivan crept into one of the horse's ears, and crept out of the other so young and comely that the like of it was never heard of in tales or seen in reality, and he sat on his brave horse and beat its iron ribs with a Circassian whip. And his horse chafed and fumed, and rose from the earth, higher than the standing woods, lower than the moving clouds; at one bound it went a league of the ancient measure: at the second bound it whizzed across the broad river; and at the third bound it reached the terem. It rose into the air like an eagle into the sky, leaped as high as thirty-one of the two-and-thirty oaken beams, and flew past like a passing whirlwind. The people cried: "Hold him, stop him!" The Tsar leaped from his seat, the Tsaritsa cried "Oh!" The Princes and the Boyars stood there with gaping mouths. The brothers of little fool Ivan returned home and said to each other: "Why, that young warrior of to-day was even better than the warrior of yesterday; there was only one oak beam he could not get as high as!"--"Why, brothers, that was I!" said little fool Ivan.--"Hold thy tongue! Thou indeed! Lie on the stove, and don't talk bosh!"