hundred roubles she would come to grief altogether. With God's help, I'll get out of this hobble myself."
So he looked carefully about and devised every possible method of escaping. He would go about the aul whistling, or he would sit down here and there and manufacture various sorts of little things, or model a puppet out of clay, or weave baskets from twigs. For Zhilin was a master at all sorts of handiwork.
Once he modelled a puppet with a nose, arms, and legs in a Tatar shirt, and put this puppet on the roof of the outhouse.
Presently the Tatar women came out to draw water. Dinka, the daughter of the house, saw the puppet and called the Tatar women to look at it. They put down their kuvshini, looked at is long and laughed aloud. Zhilin took up the puppet on the roof, went into the out houses, and watched to see what would happen.
Dina then came running up, glanced all around, seized the puppet, and ran away with it.
Next morning a dawn he saw Dina across the threshold with the puppet. She had already adorned the puppet with all sorts of parti-coloured rags, and was rocking it as if it were a child, singing a lullaby of her own invention. Then the old woman came out and scolded her, snatched away the puppet, smashed it, and sent Dina off to work somewhere.
Then Zhilin made another and even better puppet and gave it to Dina. Presently Dina came again bringing with her a little pitcher which she put on
111
