Vasilísa got everything ready with the help of her doll. Then the old woman came back, looked over everything, and said: “Ho, my faithful servants, friends of my heart! Make me some poppy-oil.” Then three pairs of hands came, laid hold of the poppies and carried them off. Bába Yagá sat down to supper, and Vasilísa sat silently in front of her. “Why do you not speak; why do you stay there as if you were dumb?” Bába Yagá asked. “I did not venture to say anything; but if I might, I should like to ask some questions.” “Ask, but not every question turns out well: too knowing is too old.” “Still, I should like to ask you of some things I saw. On my way to you I met a white horseman, in a white cloak, on a white horse: who was he?” “The bright day.” “Then a red horseman, on a red horse, in a red cloak, overtook me: who was he?” “The red sun.” “What is the meaning of the black horseman who overtook me as I reached your door, grandmother?” “That was the dark night. Those are my faithful servants.” Vasilísa then thought of the three pairs of hands and said nothing. “Why don’t you ask any further?” Bába Yagá asked. “I know enough, for you say yourself ‘too knowing is too old.’” “It is well you asked only about things you saw in the courtyard, and not about things without it, for I do not like people to tell tales out of school, and I eat up everybody who is too curious. But now I shall ask you, how did you manage to do all the work I gave you?” “By my mother’s blessing!” “Ah, then, get off with you as fast as you can, blessed daughter; no one blessed may stay with me!” So she turned Vasilísa out of the room and kicked her to the door, took a skull with the burning eyes from the fence, put it on a staff, gave it her and said, “Now you have fire for your stepmother’s daughters, for that was why they sent you here.” Then Vasilísa ran home as fast as she could by the light of the skull; and the flash in it went out with the dawn. By the evening of the next day she reached the house, and was going to throw the skull away, when she heard a hollow voice coming out of the skull and saying: “Do not throw me away. Bring me up to your stepmother’s house.” And she looked at her stepmother’s house and saw that there was no light in any window, and decided to enter with the skull. She was friendlily received, and the sisters told her that ever since she had gone away they had had no fire; they were able to make none; and all they borrowed of their neighbours went out as soon as it came into the room. “Possibly _your_ fire may burn!” said the stepmother. So they took the skull into the room, and the burning eyes looked into the stepmother’s and the daughters’ and singed their eyes out. Wherever they went, they could not escape it, for the eyes followed them everywhere, and in the morning they were all burned to cinders. Vasilísa alone was left alive.