[Footnote 25:  It would be more in accord with the Indian words to say “have one of them” instead of “have one of them for a wife.”]

But the girls said, “First, it is necessary for you to untie and bring down our hair bands for us.”  Leux climbed the tree to get the eelskin hair bands, but they had tied them so securely that it took him a long time to loosen the knots.  When he came down the girls had built a large and beautiful wigwam.  They then made Leux blind[26] [how, the narrator did not know].

[Footnote 26:  The wigwam may have been so dark that he could not see anything, or perhaps he was blinded by his admiration for the girls.]

Then the maidens call out to him, and now one and now the other invites him to come to her.  As he follows their voices one of them leads him to fall into the water, and the other makes him stumble on porcupine quills.  Exhausted, Leux then goes to sleep, wearied out with his exertions, but when he awoke the maidens had vanished.

The story of the Indian maids who were loved by k’Cheebellock, the spirit of the air, is told in another way by Leland, although that part of the story which pertains to Leux and the hair bands is the same in both accounts.  In Leland’s account we have a beautiful legend, Micmac and Passamaquoddy, in which two maids, called the weasels, are loved by the stars, not by k’Cheebellock.  It is interesting also to note that the hair bands in this variant of the story were of eelskin, a fact which is not brought in Leland’s account. k’Cheebellock is a superhuman deity of the Passamaquoddies, and is represented as a being without body, but with heart, head, wings, and long legs.  He is stronger than the wind, and is the genius of the air. k’Cheebellock has sometimes been confounded with Kewok, but Kewok is the cannibal deity, or a cannibal giant.  He is said to have a heart of ice, and to afflict the Indians in many ways.  It is he who tears the bark from the wigwam, and who frightens men and women.  Kewok is the being in whom a Norse divinity has been recognized by one or two well-known scholars.

In olden times the hair of women was tied with hair strings which were securely bound to a flat plate on the outside.  This plate was formerly of shell, or later of metal.  To this hair string was ascribed certain magic powers, especially in love affairs, and the possession of it was a potent spell.

HOW A MEDICINE MAN WAS BORN, AND HOW HE TURNED MAN INTO A TREE.

A story of old times.  There was once a woman who travelled constantly through the woods.  Every bush she saw she bit off, and from one of these she came to be with child.  She grew bigger and bigger until at last she could travel no longer, but built a wigwam near the mouth of a stream.  The woman gave birth to a child in the night.  She thought it best to kill the child, but did not wish to murder her offspring.[27]