Well, with that the soldier wishes good health to the landlord, and sets off to see the Tzar. He comes walking into the Tzar's house and gives him a salute. "Your Majesty," says he, "will you give me leave to spend one night in your empty palace?" "God bless you," says the Tzar, "but you don't know what you are asking. Foolhardy folk enough have tried to spend a night in that palace. They went in merry and boasting, but not one of them came walking out alive in the morning." "What of that?" says the soldier. "Water won't drown a Russian soldier, and fire won't burn him. I have served God and the Tzar for twenty-five years and am not dead. A single night in that palace won't be end of me." "But I tell you: a man walks in there alive in the evening, and in the morning the servants have to search the floor for the little bits of his bones." "None the less," says the soldier, "if your majesty will give me leave...." "Get along with you and God be with you," says the Tzar. "Spend the night there if you've set your heart on it." So the soldier came to the palace and stepped in, singing through the empty rooms. He made himself comfortable in the biggest room of all, laid his knapsack in a corner and hung his sword on a nail, sat down at the table, took out his bag of tobacco, filled his little pipe, and sat there smoking, ready for what might come. Twelve o'clock sharp and there was a yelling, a shouting, a blowing of horns, a scraping of fiddles and every other kind of instrument, a noise of dancing, of running, of stamping, and the palace cram full of devils making themselves at home as if the place belonged to them. "And you, soldier?" cried the devils. "What are you sitting there so glum for, smoking your pipe? There's smoke enough where we have been. Put your pipe in your pocket and play a round of cards with us." "Right you are," says the soldier, "if you'll play with my cards." "Deal them out," shouted the devils, and the soldier put his pipe in his pocket and dealt out the cards, while the devils crowded round the table fighting for room on the benches. They played a game and the soldier won. They played another and he won again. The devils were cunning enough, God knows, but not all their cunning could win a single game for them. The soldier was raking in the money all the time. Soon enough the devils had not a penny piece between them, and the soldier was for putting up his cards and lighting his pipe. Content he was, and well he might be, with his pockets bulging with money. "Stop a minute, soldier," said the devils, "we've still got sixty bushels of silver and forty of gold. We'll play for them if you'll give us time to send for them." "Lets see the silver," says the soldier, and puts the cards in his pocket. Well, they sent a little devil to fetch the silver. Sixty times he ran out of the room and sixty times he came staggering back with a bushel of silver on his shoulders.