Occasionally a peasant, after a walk in the woods, feels himself indisposed without any apparent reason for his indisposition. When this is the case it may be assumed with practical certainty that he has crossed the path of a _liéshui_. The sick man must immediately return to the wood, bearing an offering of bread, salt, and a clean napkin. Over these goods he must pronounce a prayer, afterwards leaving them behind him for the use of the goblin, and returning to his home, when the sickness will quickly pass from him. If any favour is to be asked of the _liéshui_, he may be invoked for this purpose by the following process: Cut down a number of young birches and place them in a circle, taking care that the tops all converge towards the centre. Then stand in the middle, take the cross from your neck--every Russian wears this--and pocket it, and call out "Grandpapa!" The spirit will instantly appear. There is "another way," as the cookery books would say: Go into the wood on St. John's Eve and fell a tree, taking care that it falls towards the west. Stand on the stump, facing east, and look down at your toes; then invoke the _liéshui_ thus: "Oh! grandfather, come, but not in the form of a grey wolf, nor of a black raven; but come in the shape I myself wear!" Whereupon the spirit appears immediately in the form of a human being, and, like a man, prepared to make a bargain, if favours are asked. The _liéshui_ has quite a strong sense of the great modern principle of _quid pro quo_, and generally gets the best of it in his dealings with mankind. Yet another peculiarity of the wood-goblin is his love for startling and frightening those whose business compels them to journey through his domain. He will take up a position among the boughs of a tree under which the traveller must pass, suddenly giving vent, on the approach of the latter, to all manner of terrifying sounds--loud frenzied laughter, barking, neighing, bellowing, howling as of a wolf, anything that will startle or alarm the intruder. Undoubtedly the wood-goblin is the cause of a vast amount of trouble to poor Ivan Ivanovitch; and he is, therefore, far from occupying the snug place which his cousin, the _domovoy_, enjoys in the national imagination. On the other hand, he might be very much worse than he is, and he is undoubtedly, with all his faults and shocking vices, infinitely preferable to that mean and skulking and treacherous relative of his, the _vodyánnui_. CHAPTER VIII THE BEAR THAT DIED OF CURSES