“The next morning, when her husband had gone for the day, the wife sought for the key, and having found it opened the box and called to the little fellow to come out. This he refused to do for a long time, though she promised to wash and comb him. Being at length persuaded, he peeped out, when she pulled him forth. But whenever she touched him her hands became red, though of this she took no heed, thinking she could wash it off at will. But lo! while combing him, there entered a hideous being, an awful devil, who caught the small elf from her and ran away. “Then she was terribly frightened. And trying to wash her hands, the red stain remained. When her husband returned that night he had no game; when he saw the red stain he knew all that had happened; when he knew what had happened he seized his bow to beat her; when she saw him seize his bow to beat her she ran down to the river and jumped in to escape death at his hands, though it should be by drowning. But as she fell into the water she became a sheldrake duck. And to this day the marks of the red stain are to be seen on her feet and feathers.” You will observe a very strange custom alluded to in this story, and that is the way in which the hunter is described as capturing the maiden for his wife instead of gently trying to persuade her to be his wife. This shows that it is a very far-back myth, for there are many other stories to prove that savages learned to be much more gentle in their ways toward women even before men became altogether civilized. How primitive men came to have such peculiar beliefs we cannot say positively. Some people have thought that perhaps their dreams made them think that there was a spirit inside of them separate from their ordinary life, while the sounds and movements in nature, such as the singing of a waterfall, the rustling of leaves, or the sound which stones would give out when knocked together, would seem to the uneducated mind of early mankind, to be signs of life like his own. Another very early belief is that in magic and sorcery. Primitive man used to imagine that he could make it rain by imitating the thunder, which he did by shaking dried seeds about in a gourd. Magic is really the producing of any desired effect or event by means which are quite outside of the laws of nature. As the primitive savage did not know any thing about the laws of nature, laws which have taken ages for men to discover and all of which are not even yet discovered, he revelled in the invention of means by which he thought he might accomplish the things he would like to do. Sometimes he asked spirits to help him, and if what he wanted to do was evil, he would ask aid of evil spirits. There are countless myths in which magic plays a part, examples of which you will see as you read the stories given in the following chapters.