Note 1 — The Story of Marko the Rich and Vasily the Luckless.

And once on a cold frosty day, three gray-haired men came under the window and asked an alms. Marko saw them, and ordered the dogs to be let loose. The thrice-fair Anastasia heard of it, and implored her father and said: “My own dear father, for my sake don’t drive them away, but let them pass the night in the cattle-stall.” The father consented, and bade them let the poor old beggar-men into the cattle-stall for the night. As soon as every one was asleep Anastasia rose up, made her way on tiptoe to the stall, climbed up into the loft, and looked at the beggars. The old beggar-men were crouching together in the middle of the stall, leaning on their crutch-staves with their wrinkled hands, and over their hands flowed their gray beards, and they were talking softly among themselves. One of the old men, the oldest of them all, looked at the others and said: “What news from the wide world?” The second one immediately replied: “In the village Pogoryeloe,1 in the house of Ivan the Luckless, a seventh son is born; what shall we call him, and with what inheritance shall we bless him?” And the third old man, after meditating a little, said: “We’ll call him Vasily, and we’ll enrich him with the riches of Marko the Rich, under whose roof we are now passing the night.” When they had thus said they prepared to depart, bowed low to the holy ikons, and with soft footsteps prepared to depart from the stall. Anastasia heard all this, went straight to her father, and told him the words of the old men.