Then he drove the goats through the woods where they nibbled at leaves and branches, beside a deep river where they paused to drink, and up the grassy slopes of the hill.
There the goats scattered this way and that and Yanechek sat down on a stone in the shade. He was hardly seated when he looked up and there before him, dressed all in white, stood the most beautiful maiden in the world. Her skin was red as roses and white as milk, her eyes were black as sloe berries, and her hair, dark as the raven’s wing, fell about her shoulders in long waving tresses. She smiled and offered Yanechek a big red apple.
“God bless you, shepherd boy,” she said. “Here’s something for you that grew in my own garden.”
But Yanechek knew that she must be a Yezinka and that, if he ate the apple, he would fall asleep and then she would gouge out his eyes. So he said, politely: “No, thank you, beautiful maiden. My master has a tree in his garden with apples that are bigger than yours and I have eaten as many as I want.”
When the maiden saw that Yanechek was not to be coaxed, she disappeared.
Presently a second maiden came, more beautiful,
