Soulless in the box. Arrived at the castle he knocked and banged at the door as if the house was on fire. Soulless did not know what was the matter, and he came down and opened the door himself. When he saw the soldier standing at it, I can assure you he was in a towering rage. “What do you mean,” he roared, “by knocking at my door like that? I’ll gobble you up on the spot, skin and hair and all.” But the soldier laughed in his face. “You’d better not do that,” said he, “for here I’ve got your soul in the box.” When the cannibal heard that, all his courage went down into the calves of his legs, and he begged and entreated the soldier to give him his soul. But the soldier would not hear of it; he opened the box, took out the soul, and flung it over his head; and that same instant down fell the cannibal, dead as a door-nail.(361) (M95) Another German story, which embodies the notion of the external soul in a somewhat different form, tells how once upon a time a certain king had three sons and a daughter, and for each of the king’s four children there grew a flower in the king’s garden, which was a life-flower; for it bloomed and flourished so long as the child lived, but drooped and withered away when the child died. Now the time came when the king’s daughter married a rich man and went to live with him far away. But it was not long before her flower withered in the king’s garden. So the eldest brother went forth to visit his brother-in-law and comfort him in his bereavement. But when he came to his brother-in-law’s castle he saw the corpse of his murdered sister weltering on the ramparts. And his wicked brother-in-law set before him boiled human hands and feet for his dinner. And when the king’s son refused to eat of them, his brother-in-law led him through many chambers to a murder-hole, where were all sorts of implements of murder, but especially a gallows, a wheel, and a pot of blood. Here he said to the prince, “You must die, but you may choose your kind of death.” The prince chose to die on the gallows; and die he did even as he had said. So the eldest son’s flower withered in the king’s garden, and the second son went forth to learn the fate of his brother and sister. But it fared with him no better than with his elder brother, for he too died on the gallows in the murder-hole of his wicked brother-in-law’s castle, and his flower also withered away in the king’s garden at home. Now when the youngest son was also come to his brother-in-law’s castle and saw the corpse of his murdered sister weltering on the ramparts, and the bodies of his two murdered brothers dangling from the gallows in the murder-hole, he said that for his part he had a fancy to die by the wheel, but he was not quite sure how the thing was done, and would his brother-in-law kindly shew him? “Oh, it’s quite easy,” said his brother-in-law, “you just put your head in, so,” and with that he popped his head through the middle of the wheel.