Atondido Stories
That evening it happened that the people were gathered at a
feast of shell-fish on the beach by the bright moonlight, as was
their weekly custom. But the sorrowful girl would not go with
the others. She stayed at home and sulked. As she sat alone in
the house, old Owl-man came along carrying his basket full of
toads and frogs. The girl was still crying when he came in. "I
have come for you," he said, "as the old man wished." And he
put her in his basket with the toads and frogs and carried her off.
She yelled and kicked and scratched, but the lid of the basket
was tightly closed and Owl-man laughed to himself and said,
"Now I have a wife at last. I shall be alone no more, and the peo-
ple will not now think I am so queer." So he took her to his un-
derground house by the stream. That night the people noticed
that the girl's cries were no longer heard and they said, "What
can have cured Sour-face; what can have pleased Cry-Baby into
silence?" And the girl's foster-mother wondered where she had
gone. But only the old man knew that it had happened as he had
wished, because of his magic power, and that Owl-man had tak-
en her away.
The girl was not happy in her new home, for she would not
be happy in any place. She still kept up her caterwauling and
there was no peace in the house. Owl-man was a great hunter.
Every day he went out hunting with his big basket on his arm,
but he always locked his wife in the house before he went away.
He was always very successful in the chase, and each night he
came back with his basket full of toads and frogs and field-mice
and flies. But his wife would eat none of them and she threw
them in his face when he offered them to her, and said in a bad
temper, "I will not eat your filthy food. It is not fit food for gentle
-folk." And Owl-man said, "Gentle-folk indeed! You should find
a more suitable name; you are not gentle; you are a wild evil
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