And so Alenoushka took her little brother in her arms, and the fine gentleman lifted them up before him on the big black horse, and galloped home with them across the plain to his big house not far from the river.  And when he got home he made a feast and married Alenoushka, and they lived together so happily that good people rejoiced to see them, and bad ones were jealous.  And the little lamb lived in the house, and never grew any bigger, but always frisked and played, and followed Alenoushka wherever she went.

And then one day, when the fine gentleman had ridden far away to the town to buy a new bracelet for Alenoushka, there came an old witch.  Ugly she was, with only one tooth in her head, and wicked as ever went about the world doing evil to decent folk.  She begged from Alenoushka, and said she was hungry, and Alenoushka begged her to share her dinner.  And she put a spell in the wine that Alenoushka drank, so that Alenoushka fell ill, and before evening, when the fine gentleman came riding back, had become pale, pale as snow, and as thin as an old stick.

“My dear,” says the fine gentleman, “what is the matter with you?”

“Perhaps I shall be better to-morrow,” says Alenoushka.

Well, the next day the gentleman rode into the fields, and the old hag came again while he was out.

“Would you like me to cure you?” says she.  “I know a way to make you as well as ever you were.  Plump you will be, and pretty again, before your husband comes riding home.”

“And what must I do?” says Alenoushka, crying to think herself so ugly.

“You must go to the river and bathe this afternoon,” says the old witch.  “I will be there and put a spell on the water.  Secretly you must go, for if any one knows whither you have gone my spell will not work.”

So Alenoushka wrapped a shawl about her head, and slipped out of the house and went to the river.  Only the little lamb, Vanoushka, knew where she had gone.  He followed her, leaping about, and tossing his little white tail.  The old witch was waiting for her.  She sprang out of the bushes by the riverside, and seized Alenoushka, and tore off her pretty white dress, and fastened a heavy stone about her neck, and threw her from the bank into a deep place, so that she sank to the bottom of the river.  Then the old witch, the wicked hag, put on Alenoushka’s pretty white dress, and cast a spell, and made herself so like Alenoushka to look at that nobody could tell the difference.  Only the little lamb had seen everything that had happened.

The fine gentleman came riding home in the evening, and he rejoiced when he saw his dear Alenoushka well again, with plump pink cheeks, and a smile on her rosy lips.

But the little lamb knew everything.  He was sad and melancholy, and would not eat, and went every morning and every evening to the river, and there wandered about the banks, and cried, “Baa, baa,” and was answered by the sighing of the wind in the long reeds.