Then, before the good-wife could stop her, the little maiden would fly out into the storm, full of joy, dancing about as lightly as the snow-flakes themselves.
At first the old fisherman would run after her, and bring her in quickly, for fear that the chill of the storm would kill her; but when he saw that this only saddened her, and how rosy, laughing, and healthful she always was with the snow-flakes, he said to the good-wife--
“They do not harm her--let the child have her way.”
After this they would stand by the window watching her; and very often they heard her saying--
“My pretty sisters, how merry we are--how much I love you! The winter, oh! the winter, is the joy time, and my sisters the fairies of the winter.”
“Golden Snow, Many maids are fair, We know, But none like the princess Golden Snow.”
So it happened that the old fisher-folk found out that Golden Snow was a princess, and they no longer wondered at the innate grace of the lovely child. Every thing she said, and all her ways, was so charming that it was impossible to resist her; but as she was so gentle and good, this was all well. Every night, before she went to sleep, she said reverently--“Our Father, who art in heaven.” The loving God heard her, and kept her heart pure, as she passed on through the portals of childhood into timid, dreamy maidenhood.
One day, in the winter time, when Golden Snow was about fifteen years old, a herald rode by the fisherman’s cottage, crying--“The prince! the prince will marry the most beautiful maiden in all the Gold Land. Hear! hear! the prince will marry the most-beautiful maiden in all the Gold Land!”
Then the old fisherman went out and asked the messenger what it meant.
“It means this,” replied the man, “that though the prince and all his ancestors were born in Russia, he has determined to marry only in the Gold Land, and the most beautiful maiden. For you must know, that though he is so high born in the old world, the estates are getting poor, but here he has won every thing. He has opened a mine so rich that he will never be able to count his money. He wishes his children to be real lords of the Gold Land--to be miner princes. So here he will marry even the poorest maiden, but she must be the most beautiful.”