The soldier went in, and the Tzar greeted him as his own brother, and prayed him to be quick, as he felt the sickness growing upon him as he lay. The soldier poured cold water in the glass, and set it on the Tzar's forehead, and looked and looked again, and saw Death standing at the Tzar's head. "O Tzar," says the soldier, "it's all up with you. Death is waiting by your head, and you have but a few minutes left to live." "What?" cries the Tzar, "you cure my boyars and generals and you will not cure me who am Tzar, and have treated you as my own born brother. If I've only a few minutes to live I've time enough to give orders for you to be beheaded." The soldier thought and thought, and he begged Death: "O Death," says he, "give my life to the Tzar and kill me instead. Better to die so than to end by being shamefully beheaded!" He looked once more in the glass, and saw that the little old woman Death had shifted from the Tzar's head and was now standing at his feet. He picked up the glass and splashed the water over the Tzar, and there was the Tzar as well and healthy as ever he had been. "You are my own true brother after all," says the Tzar. "Let us go and feast together." But the soldier shook in all his limbs and could hardly stand, and he knew that his time was come. He prayed Death: "O Death, give me just one hour to say good-bye to my wife and my little son." "Hurry up!" says Death. And the soldier hurried to his room in the palace, said good-bye to his wife, told his son to grow up and be a general, lay down on his bed and grew iller every minute. He looked, and there was Death, a little old woman, standing by his bedside. "Well, soldier," says Death, "you have only two minutes left to live!" The soldier groaned, and, turning in bed, pulled the flour sack from under his pillow and opened it. "Do you know what this is?" says he to Death. "A sack," says Death. "Well, if it is a sack, get into it!" says the soldier. Death was into the sack in a moment, and the soldier leapt from his bed well and strong, tied up the sack with two double knots, flung it over his shoulder and set out for the deep forest of Brian, which is the thickest in all the world. He came to the forest and made his way into the middle of it, hung the sack from the topmost branches of a high poplar tree, left it there and came home singing songs at the top of his voice and full of all kinds of merriment. From that time on there was no dying in the world. There were births every day, and plenty of them, but nobody died. It was a poor time for doctors. And so it was for many years. Death had come to an end, and it was as if all men would live for ever. And all the time the little old woman, Death, tied up in a sack, unable to get about her business, was hanging from the top of a tall poplar tree away in Brian forest.