"I have longed for many things," was the quick reply, "but for none so much as to receive such a challenge." Then without further delay they went out upon the open plain and began to shoot at an oak tree standing at a distance of about a mile. One shot and another shot, one struck and another missed, the shooting was good and not so good, and the old oak merely shook its smaller boughs as if a summer breeze were blowing. Then it came to the turn of the ambassador from the stern King Yetmanuila Yetmanuilovich, and stepping forward the envoy said, "I will not shoot with one of the heroic bows of Kiev. I have within the fair white linen pavilion in which I have lodged my brave body-guard a little bow which I always carry with me when my royal master sends me upon an embassy across the open steppe." Then at a hail from the envoy the brave body-guard brought out the bow. Five of them carried it at one end and five at the other, while the remaining thirty bold youths dragged along the quiver filled full of flaming arrows. Then the ambassador took the little travelling bow in her hand and fitted to the bow-string a flaming shaft of steel. The cord twanged, Prince Vladimir stepped quickly aside, the arrow sang a journeying song and shivered the trunk of the ancient oak, so that the sun streamed through it. "I will prove this ambassador once again," murmured Prince Vladimir in his royal beard. "If he (she) be a woman he (she) will have no taste for a wrestling match." Then he got together his strong wrestlers and assembled them in a brave company. "Will it please you," he said courteously, "bold ambassador of the stern King Yetmanuila Yetmanuilovich, to try a bout of wrestling." "Have you then bold wrestlers, as well as expert bowmen?" asked the envoy. "I have often wrestled with children during my childhood, and I can but make a bold man's effort." Then the ambassador grasped two brave wrestlers in one heroic arm and three brave wrestlers in the other heroic arm, and cracked their skulls together until the Prince begged the wrestler with children to spare his brave heroes. Then said the ambassador: "I came to woo your daughter Lovely, Prince Vladimir, and if you will not give her to me with your blessing, I will take her with your curse." "You shall have her by my own consent," said the King, "for with such a wooer her own consent does not greatly matter." Then Prince Vladimir seized the occasion to make a great wedding-feast, which lasted with intervals for resting for the full space of three days. When the feast was over the bride and bridegroom were about to be led to the church to take the golden crowns, but the ambassador sat sad and silent in the hall. "What ails you on your wedding morning?" asked the father of the bride.