And on stormy nights, when the wind howled and windows rattled and the tempest-torn trees swayed and groaned, people all over the island barred their doors tight and fast, for they said: “The spirits of the wood are out to-night.” And they lit incense sticks to keep them from coming in, and as they sipped their tea, told stories about the weird wood. A favorite one was that a beautiful Princess was kept there a prisoner by a cruel dragon, and of how a mighty Prince once found her and carried her away to his castle, but she heard the dragon calling, calling, calling her all the day and all the night, and at last either she slipped out of the castle and went to him or else he came and stole her away, no one knew just which way it was. And while other brave men would willingly go to rescue her, yet they all agreed what was the use, for the dragon would get her again and they would have their trouble for nothing. So she had been there now for hundreds and hundreds of years, but was still young and lovely--so the story ran. But like all legends, it got a little twisted in the telling. So many summers and winters came and went that every one except the fox forgot to count them. At last a famine spread over all the land. It was the Period of Greatest Heat. No rain had fallen for many a week. The earth was dry as a dead leaf, the grass turned brown, the streams dried up, the birds all died or went away, one by one the animals perished, and the once beautiful Napatantutu was grim and desolate. The fox was now five hundred years old. His coat of fur was whiter than when he was young, his legs were not so nimble and some of his teeth were gone. He searched the wood for food and water and could find neither. He grew so thin that his ribs stuck through the skin, so weak he trembled like the aspen when he walked. The pains of hunger gnawed him day and night and he felt as if he must surely die. Then he mustered up all the strength he had left and crawled to the big tree with the hollow trunk. There he fell down, a heap of skin and bones, and called feebly for the dragon. When this terrible creature came out it blew fire and smoke at him in awful wrath. “I thought you wanted to be a fox with nine golden tails. Why have you disturbed me?” it thundered. “A fox with nine golden tails is a nice thing to talk about,” the poor fox whimpered, “but a wise man is better than a dead fox, even if it had twenty golden tails, so make me a wizard, Great One, and then will I trouble you no more.” “Bah!” cried the dragon with such fury that the flames from its mouth flew up to the top of the hollow tree. When they died away the fox was nowhere to be seen. In his place stood a very solemn-looking old man with green spectacles and a bald head.