fast asleep; the youngest, with the prudence
proper to number three, kept wide awake.

When they had all risen in the morning the
eldest agreed to remain in the palace, and cook
the dinner, while the other two went out with
their guns. While alone, occupied with his
useful duties, he received a visit from a man
of gigantic stature, who seemed by no means
gratified to find him making himself so completely
at home, and told him he would give him
as many blows with a cudgel as there are days
in the year. This was no empty menace. The
giant thrashed the intruder with arithmetical
precision, and then conveniently retired. Being
of a reserved disposition, the eldest brother on
the return of the rest did not find it expedient to
describe what had happened, but attributed tin
paleness, naturally produced by the three hundred
and sixty-five blows, to an illness with
which he had been attacked in the course of the
day.

The second brother, who kept house on the
day following, found himself in the same position
as the eldest: with this variation of detail
that he received blows equal in number to the
days in two years. He, likewise, when his brothers
returned, ascribed his paleness to an indisposition;
but, rightly suspecting that the eldest
had been initiated into the private manners and
customs of the castle, he favoured him with a
wink, which the youngest, ever 'cute, did not
fail to observe.

As the sharp third had, however, listened
attentively when his brothers, supposing him to
be asleep, had confessed their sufferings to each
other, he was well primed with information when
his turn arrived for keeping house, and he
received the regular visit from the giant. That
huge specimen of humanity, increasing his
vindictiveness by the law of arithmetical
progression, proposed to chastise the third
delinquent with a number of blows equal to that of
the days in three years; but the youth boldly
answered him that he himself must prepare to
receive as many blows as there are days in six
years. The giant changed the subject by
remarking that he was taller than the defiant
youngster; but the latter refuted the assertion
by standing on a chair. Whether the giant
failed to detect the rude artifice, or whether he
scorned to imitate so paltry a device, we cannot
say. Certain it is that by merely stretching
his neck, he overtopped the small braggart, who,
to maintain his ascendency, was forced to
mount from the chair to the table. Still the
elongation of neck continued; and though,
by setting the chair on the table, the youth
secured for himself a pedestal more elevated,
the giant did not desist, but vigorously went
on augmenting the distance between his head
and his shoulders.

Now, the position which is rendered familiar
to modern eyes by the figure of the clown in the
itinerant Fantoccini, however convenient it
might be for a short person walking in a
crowd, or standing in a theatre at the back of
a crowded pit, is anything but suitable to the
purpose of self-defence. So, when the giant's
neck was at its longest, the youngster on his
table-supported chair found no difficulty in
striking off the giant's head with his cutlass.
When he had afterwards hewed the body into
pieces and flung them into a well, his victory
was complete.

To his brothers, when they came back, he
expressed a wish to descend into the well at
once; and, fastening himself to a cord, to which
a bell was also attached, requested them to let
him down, warning them that if, after three
days, the bell gave no sound, they might
fairly consider him dead. Here was a case in
which he might count on their compliance, and
they cheerfully granted his request: though
they knew no more than we ourselves what he
could possibly want at the bottom of a strange
well.

We may suppose that he was guided by a
correct instinct, for when he had reached the
bottom of the well, he found himself in a large
meadow, richly adorned with flowers and
somewhat disfigured by the presence of an ugly old
woman, who sat by a fire boiling a caldron.
To the young man's question as to the purpose
of her occupation, she replied that her son had
been cut to pieces, and that she intended to
restore him to life by boiling him in the caldron.
Perceiving at once that the dismembered
son could be no other than the giant, the youth
prevented the old lady from carrying out her
kindly purpose by suddenly pushing her into
he caldron and boiling her to death.

This virtuous act performed, a short walk
across the meadow brought our adventurer to
a palace, at the gates of which he knocked, but
was informed by a lovely damsel, who appeared
at the window, that if he entered he would be
devoured by two serpents; she added that her
husband, a magician, was at home and in bed,
and that he likewise could eat human flesh.
Of these little difficulties the youth made short
work. He struck off, first the heads of the
erpents, then the head of the magician, and
finally roasted a portion of each for his dinner.
The magician's widow, who had been carried
off against her will, was so highly delighted with
him, that she wished to accompany him; but
he declined the offer, and she therefore gave him
a ring for a keepsake. A second palace, in
which the youth found another lady, who gave
him a handkerchief, another magician in bed,
and two lions, and where he killed and partially
ate the lions and the magician, we may pass over
and follow him to a third palace, where the
vicims were a third magician and two tigers, and
where there was a lady more beautiful than the
second, who was herself more beautiful than
the first: though, as they were all sisters, there
was a strong family likeness between them.

Accompanied by the third and most exquisite
beauty, who presented him with a costly jewel,
the youth retraced his steps, picking up the
other two sisters on his backward route, until
he was once more at the bottom of the well.
Here he rung the bell, and attached to the rope