“You may depend upon it that he is there,” said Two-Legs. “If only we could find the right means to call him forth, I believe that there is more of him in iron and in copper and other metals than in anything else. Just look how weak he is in the glass tube and the amber: he comes when I rub, catches the little fluffs and is gone again at once. No, if we can charm him from the iron, then we shall see him in his might.”
6
One day, the boy went into the mountains and found a lodestone, which he thought looked odd. He took it home to Two-Legs, who examined it long and closely, as he examined everything. Without thinking of it further, he began to rub the thick iron bar with the lodestone and saw, to his surprise, that the stone clung to the iron:
“Boy, what have you found?” he cried.
Henceforth, he thought of nothing but iron and copper and other metals.
He forged himself bars of iron, large and small, rubbed them with the lodestone and saw that they became electric. The spirit was in them and the spirit came out of them, but differently and not as in the glass tube and the amber and the sulphur ball.
It was no use for him to come with fluffs of down and little shreds of paper. The spirit did not catch at them. But, when he came with iron, the spirit caught hold of it and held it ever so tight.
“That is the proper, powerful spirit,” said the boy joyfully.
Two-Legs saw also that the spirit was only at the two ends of the bar which he rubbed with the lodestone. The spirit ran into the ends and stayed there and caught hold of the pieces of iron which he held out to him. In the middle of the bar there was no spirit.