“Why should I not weep? The Sea Tsar has bidden me thresh clean thirty hayricks of barley without destroying a hayrick or a single sheaf, and all in a single night.”

“That is an easy task. Harder tasks are to come. Sleep in peace, for the morning is wiser than the evening.”

So Iván Tsarévich went and lay down.

Vasilísa went to her window and cried out in a threatening voice, “Hail, ye creeping ants, as many as there be of you in the white world, all creep here and pick out all the corn of my father’s hayricks quite cleanly.”

In the morning the Sea Tsar asked Iván Tsarévich if he had done this service.

“I have, your Majesty.”

“Let us go and see.”

So they went to the barn floor, and there all the hayricks stood untouched; and they went to the granary, and all the lofts were filled to the top with corn.