"Take, then, the Princess Apraxia," cried the King in great haste, and the two friends paused to gather breath. Then quiet Dunai went to the great castle and began to knock off the thrice nine locks, and to force open the doors. He entered the tower with the golden roof and came to the apartment where the Princess Apraxia was pacing to and fro clad in a fine robe without a girdle, her golden hair all unbound and her feet all bare. "Hail, Princess," said the royal envoy, bowing courteously, "and pardon my coming without announcement. Will you wed with Prince Vladimir, the Fair Sun of Kiev?" "For three years," said the Princess, "have I longed and prayed that Vladimir might be my husband." Then quiet Dunai took her by the small white hands, kissed her golden ring, and led her at once into the courtyard where they met the King. "Take with the Princess," he said, "her royal dowry," and he gave immediate orders for the loading of thirty wagons with red gold, white silver, and fine seed pearls. Then the Princess arrayed herself, and coming forth again rode away with the goodly youths over the smiling, far-reaching, green and open plain; and as they rode she sang softly to herself of love and freedom and a fair white throne. When the dark night fell the two youths set up a white linen pavilion, in which the Princess Apraxia rested, while they lay down near the entrance with their shaggy steeds at their feet, their sharp spears at their heads, their stout swords at their right hands and their daggers of steel at their left. Both slept, for their steeds were their sentinels, and the dark night passed by with nothing seen except the stars, nothing heard except the rustle of the breeze round the curtains of the fair white linen bower of the Princess Apraxia. While it was still early morning they arose, and were setting out again upon their way, when, looking back, they saw a Tatar horseman in pursuit of them, his steed all bespattered with the mire of the plain. When Dunai was aware of this, he sent Nikitich forward to Kiev town with the Princess Apraxia, but remained himself to meet the bold adventurer, who surely had not heard how quiet Dunai had wooed the Princess Apraxia for his royal master. In the midst of the plain the combatants met, and, without taking time to observe each other closely, but each taking the other for an accursed Tatar, they fell to resounding blows. In a few moments quiet Dunai was unhorsed, but he sprang at once to his nimble feet and fought his foe with mace and spear and sword, until he laid him prone upon the broad bosom of moist Mother Earth. Then quiet Dunai drew his dagger: "Tell me now," he said, as he brushed the dew of onset from his eyes with his left sleeve, "the name that you bear and the name of the accursed horde from whence you come."