They were not kept guessing very long. Hanka came running and shouting:
“Greetings, O Merciful Tsar, greetings from King Winter! He gave me a message to thee, but I have forgotten it, but here is a bag of snow-stars for thee, and thy city is all thawed out, King Winter has gone back to the North Pole. And I went through thy palace and found lots of crackers and jam, which I ate. I didn’t mean to steal, but there was nobody to ask for them so I had to take them.”
“Thou art welcome to my crackers and jam, dear Hanka,” he said, as he opened the bag of snow-stars, took it by the lower corners, and turned it upside down.
Out of the bag rolled thousands and thousands of sparkling, flashing diamonds! The people stood open-mouthed, and Hanka sat down with surprise when he saw what he had been carrying.
“That means we may return, for King Winter’s war is over,” said the Tsar. So all the people went back to their city on the shores of the White Sea, where the streets were paved with silver, the walls were shining marble, and the church steeples were topped with gold. The Tsar sat on his throne again, but he ruled his people now with mercy and justice, so everyone liked to be brought before him to see his mild fatherly face.
Hanka was allowed to live in the palace all his life, and had a silver fishing-rod, a silken line and a diamond sinker, and was permitted to cast for gold-fish in the royal pond. King Winter came for a visit once every year with a little snow just to remind people of his past reign; but he always found the people ready to joke and laugh at the bad weather he brought, for they were all happy and contented who lived in the city of the Merciful Tsar.
--Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.
--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard (or amusing) spellings and dialect unchanged.
--In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)
End of Project Gutenberg's The Cruise of the Little Dipper, by Susanne Langer