nd the round stone into another, and
shouldering his musket marched away until he reached the town-gate, and
there was the old man waiting for him.

"Did you shoot the bird?" said he.

"I did," said the soldier.

"And did you get the cap and the round stone?"

"I did."

"Then here is your dollar."

"Wait a bit," said the soldier, "I shot greater game that time than
I bargained for, and so it's ten dollars and not one you shall pay me
before you lay finger upon the feather cap and the little stone."

"Very well," said the old man, "here are ten dollars."

"Ho! ho!" thought the soldier, "is that the way the wind blows?"--"Did I
say ten dollars?" said he; "twas a hundred dollars I meant."

At that the old man frowned until his eyes shone green. "Very well,"
said he, "if it is a hundred dollars you want, you will have to come
home with me, for I have not so much with me." Thereupon he entered the
town with the soldier at his heels.

Up one street he went and down another, until at last he came to a
great, black, ancient ramshackle house; and that was where he lived. In
he walked without so much as a rap at the door, and so led the way to
a great room with furnaces and books and bottles and jars and dust and
cobwebs, and three grinning skulls upon the mantelpiece, each with a
candle stuck atop of it, and there he left the soldier while he went to
get the hundred dollars.

The soldier sat him down upon a three-legged stool in the corner and
began staring about him; and he liked the looks of the place as little
as any he had seen in all of his life, for it smelled musty and dusty,
it did: the three skulls grinned at him, and he began to think that the
little old man was no better than he should be. "I wish," says he, at
last, "that instead of being here I might be well out of my scrape and
in a safe place."

Now the little old man in scarlet was a great magician, and there was
little or nothing in that house that had not some magic about it, and of
all things the three-legged stool had been conjured the most.

"I wish that instead of being here I might be well out of my scrape,
and in a safe place." That was what the soldier said; and hardly had the
words left his lips when--whisk! whir!--away flew the stool through the
window, so suddenly that the soldier had only just time enough to gripe
it tight by the legs to save himself from falling. Whir! whiz!--away it
flew like a bullet. Up and up it went--so high in