"What devils! Just come and look what a lot of gold and silver I won off them. Look, what piles of it!" And the Tsar's servants looked and were amazed. And the soldier told them: "Bring me two smiths as fast as you can. Tell them to bring an iron anvil and a hammer."
Off they went helter-skelter to the smiths, and the matter was soon arranged.
The smiths arrived with iron anvil and with heavy hammers.
"Now," said the soldier, "take this nosebag and beat it hard after the ancient manner of smiths."
So the smiths took the nosebag, and they began to whisper to each other: "How fearfully heavy it is! The devil must be in it."
The devils shrieked in answer: "Yes, we are there, father—yes, we are there! Kinsmen, help us!"
So the smiths instantly laid the nosebag on the iron anvil, and they began to knock it about with their hammers as though they were hammering iron.
Very soon the devils saw that they could not possibly stand such treatment, and they began to shriek: "Mercy on us—mercy on us! Let us out, discharged soldier, into the free world. Unto all eternity we will not forget you, and into this palace never a devil shall enter again. We will forbid everybody—all of them—and drive them all a hundred versts away."
So the soldier bade the smiths stop, and as soon as he unbuckled the nosebag the devils rushed out, and flew off, without looking, into the depths of hell—into the abysses of hell. But the soldier was no fool; and as they were flying out he laid hold of one old devil—laid hold of him tight by his paw. "Come along," he said; "give me some written undertaking that you will always serve me faithfully."
The unholy spirit wrote him out this undertaking in his own blood, gave it him, and took to his heels.
