By this time the royal company had somewhat recovered their composure, and in order to hide their confusion were busily conversing about the day before yesterday. When Ilya arrived they were seated at the white tables eating savoury viands from the board and drinking green wine and sweet mead; and they complimented Ilya very prettily, as soon as he had washed himself. When the feast was over, the Prince gave the hero the supreme honour of ever henceforth styling himself Ilya of Murom the Old Cossáck, for it was reckoned the highest honour that a hero should take his title from the land on which he was born, especially if it was owned by his father; and Ilya, being a true gentleman, valued this distinction infinitely higher than a heaped-up waggon-load of red gold, another of white silver, and a third of fine seed pearls. As for those bones of the Magic Bird which were scattered to the winds, as they fell to earth they became seeds of the blood-red poppy, from the flowers of which came the first sweet whistling nightingales who know nothing of the roar of the lion or the hiss of the serpent. ILYA AND FALCON THE HUNTER One day Ilya rode his shaggy bay steed Cloudfall across the open steppe; and as he went slowly onward he was thinking deeply, for he had performed many deeds of the greatest valour, and was now wondering greatly what he should do next. "I have visited many lands," he said in a brooding voice, "and have seen many strange people, but for a long time I have not visited Kiev, where I took Nightingale the Robber as a prisoner firmly bound to my stirrup of bright steel. I will go now to Kiev once more, so that I may see what is happening in the household of Prince Vladimir." Raising his head and smiling quietly like a man filled with a secret purpose, he gave Cloudfall the rein, and before he could say "Svyatogor" he was in the city of Kiev, where it was told him by a cook whom he met hurrying across the street that Prince Vladimir was holding a merry feast. Ilya at once tethered Cloudfall to the carven pillar in the cathedral court and took his way on foot to the banquet-hall of Prince Vladimir, which he entered without invitation, knowing that all wayfarers were welcome to the board of the hospitable Prince. As soon as he had passed the threshold, Ilya bowed to North, South, East, and West, and then to Prince Vladimir and Princess Apraxia in particular, thinking that the royal couple would surely have a clear remembrance of all the wonderful things that had taken place on his last visit to their town. But neither the Prince nor the Princess knew him again, and it was as a perfect stranger that Vladimir addressed him. "What is your name and to which horde do you belong?" he asked; "and have you any title of degree?" "Fair Sun Vladimir," said Ilya, who was secretly taken aback at his reception, but determined not to show it, "I am called Nikita from beyond the Forest."