Djinn and his wife had their home among the mountains in the High Forests, and they would permit no man to come there unless he was one of their family.
Djinn was a fine hunter and had a quiver filled with poisoned arrows, but he did not hunt in the fashion common to mankind. If he chanced to see monkeys in a tree he would merely shoot at the tree, and soon enough the monkeys would be poisoned and fall down.
Anything that Djinn shot at always fell, and thus he was the most famous hunter in the land.
When his wife was expecting a child Djinn went out to hunt more frequently, that she might have the delicacies which the child in her desired; but so skillful was his hunting that animals were now difficult to find.
One day he searched the forest from early morning until dusk, and found no meat at all; and as night was falling he came upon a man who had a deer. He politely asked the man for a little of the meat, but the man refused and went his way. Djinn went home empty-handed to his wife.
“Did you find nothing at all today?” she asked.
“Nothing at all,” he said. “The forest is empty.”
“Did you not even meet someone with meat?”
“Only a man with a deer, and he would give me nothing.”
His wife was vexed.
“I believe you are not so clever as you used to be,” she said.
“In other days you would not have left a whole deer to one greedy man when your family was hungry, and come home empty-handed.”
Djinn considered this. Next morning he tracked the hunter to his town, and when he arrived he asked for the man who had killed a deer the day before. Djinn was such a small fellow that no one took any notice of him, so he began smelling and sniffing from house to house and finally found the one he sought. He knocked on the door, and when the hunter came out Djinn attacked him.
People were surprised to see this small Djinn attacking the town hunter, but when the hunter was overpowered and tied up in a hamper they became alarmed. As Djinn carried the hamper out of town spears and arrows followed him, but all were turned aside and Djinn escaped.
The town hunter was never seen again. Thereafter Djinns were feared and respected by the people, and whenever a hunter meets one he will give him half his meat.