There was once an old woodsman and his wife who had an only son named Mikko. As the mother lay dying the young man wept bitterly.
“When you are gone, my dear mother,” he said, “there will be no one left to think of me.”
The poor woman comforted him as best she could and said to him:
“You will still have your father.”
Shortly after the woman’s death, the old man, too, was taken ill.
“Now, indeed, I shall be left desolate and alone,” Mikko thought, as he sat beside his father’s bedside and saw him grow weaker and weaker.
“My boy,” the old man said just before he died, “I have nothing to leave you but the three snares with which these many years I have caught wild animals. Those snares now belong to you. When I am dead, go into the woods and if you find a wild creature caught in any of them, free it gently and bring it home alive.”
After his father’s death, Mikko remembered the snares and went out to the woods to see them. The first was empty and also the second, but in the third he found a little red Fox. He carefully lifted the spring that had shut down on one of the Fox’s feet and then carried the little creature home in his arms. He shared his supper with it and when he lay down to sleep the Fox curled up at his feet. They lived together some time until they became close friends.
“Mikko,” said the Fox one day, “why are you so sad?”
“Because I’m lonely.”