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The old man harnessed the mare to the sledge and brought it to the door. The snow was very deep and frozen hard, and the wind peeled the skin from his ears before he covered them with the flaps of his fur hat.

“Sit down at the table and have a bite before you go,” says the old woman.

The old man sat down, and his daughter with him, and drank a glass of tea and ate some black bread. And the old woman put some cabbage soup, left from the day before, in a saucer, and said to Martha, “Eat this, my little pigeon, and get ready for the road.” But when she said “my little pigeon,” she did not smile with her eyes, but only with her cruel mouth, and Martha was afraid. The old woman whispered to the old man: “I have a word for you, old fellow. You will take Martha to her betrothed, and I’ll tell you the way. You go straight along, and then take the road to the right into the forest … you know … straight to the big fir tree that stands on a hillock, and there you will give Martha to her betrothed and leave her. He will be waiting for her, and his name is Frost.”

The old man stared, opened his mouth, and stopped eating. The little maid, who had heard the last words, began to cry,

“Now, what are you whimpering about?” screamed the old woman. “Frost is a rich bridegroom and a handsome one. See how much he owns. All the pines and firs are his, and the birch trees. Any one would envy his possessions, and he himself is a very bogatir,[2] a man of strength and power.”

The old man trembled, and said nothing in reply. And Martha went on crying quietly, though she tried to stop her tears. The old man packed up what was left of the black bread, told Martha to put on her sheepskin coat, set her in the sledge and climbed in, and drove off along the white, frozen road.

The road was long and the country open, and the wind grew colder and colder, while the frozen snow blew up from under the hoofs of the mare and spattered the sledge with white patches. The tale is soon told, but it takes time to happen, and the sledge was white all over long before they turned off into the forest.

They came in the end deep into the forest, and left the road, and over the deep snow through the trees to the great fir. There the old man stopped, told his daughter to get out of the sledge, set her little box under the fir, and said, “Wait here for your bridegroom, and when he comes be sure to receive him with kind words.” Then he turned the mare round and drove home, with the tears running from his eyes and freezing on his cheeks before they had had time to reach his beard.

[Footnote 2: The bogatirs were strong men, heroes of old Russia.]

The little maid sat and trembled. Her sheepskin coat was worn through, and in her blue bridal dress she sat, while fits of shivering shook her whole body. She wanted to run away; but she had not strength to move, or even to keep her little white teeth from chattering between her frozen lips.

Suddenly, not far away, she heard Frost crackling among the fir trees, just as he is crackling now. He was leaping from tree to tree, crackling as he came.

He leapt at last into the great fir tree, under which the little maid was sitting. He crackled in the top of the tree, and then called; down out of the topmost branches,–

“Are you warm, little maid?”

“Warm, warm, little Father Frost.”

Frost laughed, and came a little lower in the tree and crackled and crackled louder than before. Then he asked,–