climbed the tree and brought the girls down safe and
sound. He then demanded one of them for his wife.[25]

[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