nd
something else." She went out of the lodge saying to herself, "Was there
ever so obstinate a boy?" She did not dare to answer this time that she
had nothing. Luckily she thought of her own beautiful hair, and pulling
some of it from among her locks, she quickly braided it into a cord,
and, returning, she handed it to her brother. The moment his eye fell
upon this jet black braid he was delighted. "This will do," he said; and
he immediately began to run it back and forth through his hands as
swiftly as he could; and as he drew it forth, he tried its strength. He
said again, "this will do;" and winding it in a glossy coil about his
shoulders, he set out a little after midnight. His object was to catch
the sun before he rose. He fixed his snare firmly on a spot just where
the sun must strike the land as it rose above the earth; and sure
enough, he caught the sun, so that it was held fast in the cord and did
not rise.

The animals who ruled the earth were immediately put into great
commotion. They had no light; and they ran to and fro, calling out to
each other, and inquiring what had happened. They summoned a council to
debate upon the matter, and an old dormouse, suspecting where the
trouble lay, proposed that some one should be appointed to go and cut
the cord. This was a bold thing to undertake, as the rays of the sun
could not fail to burn whoever should venture so near to them.

At last the venerable dormouse himself undertook it, for the very good
reason that no one else would. At this time the dormouse was the largest
animal in the world. When he stood up he looked like a mountain. It
made haste to the place where the sun lay ensnared, and as it came
nearer and nearer, its back began to smoke and burn with the heat, and
the whole top of his huge bulk was turned in a very short time to
enormous heaps of ashes. It succeeded, however, in cutting the cord with
its teeth and freeing the sun, which rolled up again, as round and
beautiful as ever, into the wide blue sky. But the dormouse--or blind
woman as it is called--was shrunk away to a very small size; and that is
the reason why it is now one of the tiniest creatures upon the earth.

The little boy returned home when he discovered that the sun had escaped
his snare, and devoted himself entirely to hunting. "If the beautiful
hair of my sister would not hold the sun fast, nothing in the world
could," he said. "He was not born, a little fellow like himself, to look