And , to satisfy him , the woman turned round and perceived her husband . Oh , how glad they all were to be together again ! And when the wind whistled through the forest , and the snow stood in great banks round the door , the father used to take the little boy on his knee and tell him how he caught salmon in the Land of the Sun . How the Stalos Were Tricked -LSB- From the Journal of the Anthropological Institute . -RSB- ` Mother , I have seen such a wonderful man , ' said a little boy one day , as he entered a hut in Lapland , bearing in his arms the bundle of sticks he had been sent out to gather . ` Have you , my son ; and what was he like ? ' asked the mother , as she took off the child 's sheepskin coat and shook it on the doorstep . ` Well , I was tired of stooping for the sticks , and was leaning against a tree to rest , when I heard a noise of ` sh - ` sh , among the dead leaves . I thought perhaps it was a wolf , so I stood very still . But soon there came past a tall man -- oh ! twice as tall as father -- with a long red beard and a red tunic fastened with a silver girdle , from which hung a silver-handled knife . Behind him followed a great dog , which looked stronger than any wolf , or even a bear . But why are you so pale , mother ? ' ` It was the Stalo , ' replied she , her voice trembling ; ` Stalo the man-eater ! You did well to hide , or you might never had come back . But , remember that , though he is so tall and strong , he is very stupid , and many a Lapp has escaped from his clutches by playing him some clever trick . ' Not long after the mother and son had held this talk , it began to be whispered in the forest that the children of an old man called Patto had vanished one by one , no one knew whither . The unhappy father searched the country for miles round without being able to find as much as a shoe or a handkerchief , to show him where they had passed , but at length a little boy came with news that he had seen the Stalo hiding behind a well , near which the children used to play . The boy had waited behind a clump of bushes to see what would happen , and by-and-by he noticed that the Stalo had laid a cunning trap in the path to the well , and that anybody who fell over it would roll into the water and drown there . And , as he watched , Patto 's youngest daughter ran gaily down the path , till her foot caught in the strings that were stretched across the steepest place .
She slipped and fell , and XXXXX another instant had rolled into the water within reach of the Stalo .
Behind across down from in that through till to with