“I was walking out beyond there in the garden one day, when I came on a beautiful rod, which I cut and took with me. I discovered soon after that that was a rod of enchantment, and never let it go from me. When I went walking or riding in the day, I took the rod with me. In the night, I slept with it under my pillow. Misfortune came on me at last; for I left the rod in my chamber one time that I started away to go fowling. After I had gone a good piece of road, I remembered the rod, and hurried home then to get it.
“When I came to the castle I found a dark tall man inside in my chamber with the queen. They saw me, and I turned from the door to let them slip out, and think that I had not seen them. I went to the door not long after, and opened it. Your mother was standing inside, not two feet from the threshold. She struck me right there with the rod, and made a wild deer of me.
“When she had me a deer, she let out a great pack of hounds; for every hand’s breadth of my body there was a savage dog to tear me, and hunt me to death. The hounds chased me, and followed till I ran to the far away mountains. There I escaped. So great was my swiftness and strength that I brought my life with me.
“After that I went back to injure the queen; and I did every harm in my power to her grain, and her crops, and her gardens.
“One day she sprang up from behind a stone wall, when I thought no one near, struck me with the rod, and made a wolf of me. She called a hunt then. Hounds and men chased me fiercely till evening. At nightfall I escaped to an island in a lake where no man was living. Next day I went around each perch of that island. I searched every place, and found only a she-wolf.
“But the wolf was a woman enchanted years before,—enchanted when she was within one week of her time to give birth to a hero. There she was; but the hero could not be born unless she received her own form again.
“There was little to eat on the island for the she-wolf, and still less after I came. What I suffered from hunger in that place no man can know; for I had a wolf’s craving, and only scant food to stop it. One day above another, I was lying half asleep, half famished, and dreaming. I thought that a kid was there near me. I snapped at it, and awoke. I had torn open the side of the she-wolf. Before me was an infant, which grew to the size of a man in one moment. That man is the birth that has never been born, and never will be; that man is the Half Slim Champion.
“When I snapped at the she-wolf, I bit her so deeply that I took a piece from behind the ear of the child, and killed the mother. When you go back to the Half Slim Champion, and he asks who is the man that has never been born, and never will be, you will say: Try behind your own ear, you will find the mark on him.
“The infant, grown to a man before my eyes, attacked me, to kill me. I ran, and he followed. He hunted me through every part of that island. At last I had no escape but to swim to the country-side opposite. I sprang to the water, though I had not the strength of the time when I went from the hunters; but on the way were two rocks. On these I drew breath, and then came to land. I could not have swum five perches farther.
“I lived after that in close hiding, and met with no danger till I was going through a small lane one evening, and, looking behind, saw the hero whose mother I killed on the island. I started; he rushed along after me. I came to a turn, and was thinking to go over the wall, and escape by the fields, when I met my false queen. She struck me with the rod in her fright, and I got back my own form again. I snatched the rod quickly, and struck her. ‘You’ll be a wolf now,’ said I; ‘you’ll have your own share of misfortune.’ With that she sprang over the wall, a gray wolf, and ran off through the pastures.