the steps and looked in at the door. The Maganud was sitting there on
the floor of his house; and the little boy ran up to him and hugged
him, and cried for joy. But the Maganud was startled and dismayed;
for he was a chaste malaki, [126] and had no children. Yet this boy
called him "father," and begged for ripe bananas in a very familiar
manner. After they had talked for a little while, the Maganud went
with the child to the home of the kingfisher.

The kingfisher had made her nest at the foot of a great hollow
tree. She had dug out a hole, about four feet deep, in the soft ground,
and fixed a roof by heaping over the hole the powdered rotten bark of
the old tree. The roof stood up just a few inches above the ground;
and when the Maganud saw it, he thought it was a mere little heap of
earth. Immediately, however, as he looked at the lowly nest, it became
a fine house with walls of gold, and pillars of ivory. The eaves were
all hung with little bells (korung-korung [127]); and the whole house
was radiantly bright, for over it forked lighting played continually.

The kingfisher took off her feather coat, and became a lovely woman,
and then she and the Malaki were married. They had bananas and
cocoanut-groves, and all things, and they became rich people.

The Woman and the Squirrel

One day a woman went out to find water. She had no water to drink,
because all the streams were dried up. As she went along, she saw
some water in a leaf. She drank it, and washed her body. As soon as
she had drunk the water, her head began to hurt. Then she went home,
spread out a mat, lay down on it, and went to sleep. She slept for
nine days. When she woke up, she took a comb and combed her hair. As
she combed it, a squirrel-baby came out from her hair. After the baby
had been in the house one week, it began to grow and jump about. It
staid up under the roof of the house.

One day the Squirrel said to his mother, "O mother! I want you to
go to the house of the Datu who is called 'sultan,' and take these
nine kamagi [128] and these nine finger-rings to pay for the sultan's
daughter, because I want to marry her."

Then the mother went to the sultan's house and remained there an
hour. The sultan said, "What do you want?"

The woman answered, "Nothing. I came for betel-nuts." Then the woman
went back home.

The Squirrel met her, and said, "Where are my nine necklaces?"

"Here they are," said the woman.

But the Squirrel was angry