A third story introduces us to a husband whose young wife had been carried off and wedded by a fairy chief. For a while she lived with her captor in one of the villages of the fairies into which no living man has ever penetrated, though hunters in the forest have sometimes seen barriers of intertwined wild vines, which are the outer defences of an elfin _pa_. The bereaved husband at last bethought himself of consulting a famous _tohunga_, who, by powerful incantations, turned the captured wife’s thoughts back to her human husband, and restored the strength of her love for him. She fled, therefore, from her fairy dwelling, met her husband, who was lurking in the neighbourhood, and together they regained their old home. Thither, of course, the fairies followed them in hot pursuit. But the art of the _tohunga_ was equal to the danger. He had caused the escaped wife and the outside of her house to be streaked and plastered with red ochre. He had also instructed the people of the village to cook food on a grand scale, so that the air should be heavy with the smell of the cooking at the time of the raid of the fairies. The sight of red ochre and the smell of cooked food are so loathsome to the fairy people that they cannot endure to encounter them. So the baffled pursuers halted, fell back and vanished, and the wife remained peacefully with her husband, living a happy Maori life. The Maori might well worship Tané, the tree-god, who held up the sky with his feet and so let in light upon the sons of earth. For the forest supplied them with much more than wood for their stockades, canoes, and utensils. It sheltered the birds which made such an important part of the food of the Maori, living as they did in a land without four-footed beasts. Tame as the birds were, the fowlers, on their side, were without bows and arrows, and knew nothing of the blow-gun, which would have been just the weapon for our jungles. They had to depend mainly on snaring and spearing, and upon the aid of decoys. Though the snaring was ingenious enough, it was the spearing that needed especial skill and was altogether the more extraordinary. The spears were made of the tawa-tree, and while they were but an inch in thickness, were thirty feet long or even longer. One tree could only supply two of these slim weapons, which, after metals became known to the Maori, were tipped with iron. When not in use they were lashed or hung in a tree. Taking one in hand the fowler would climb up to a platform prepared in some tree, the flowers or berries of which were likely to attract wild parrots or pigeons. Then the spear was pushed upwards, resting against branches. All the fowler’s art was next exerted to draw down the birds by his decoys to a perch near the spear-point. That accomplished, a quick silent stab did the rest. Many living white men have seen this dexterous feat performed, though it must be almost a thing of the past now. As soon as the Maori