own to
the ground. Then the little tailor found himself out in the wide world,
and he wandered about, and finally engaged himself to a master tailor,
but the food was not good enough for him.

"Mistress," said Tom Thumb, "if you do not give us better victuals, I
shall go out early in the morning and write with a piece of chalk on the
house-door, 'Plenty of potatoes to eat, and but little meat; so
good-bye, Mr. Potato.'"

"What are you after, grasshopper?" said the mistress, and growing angry
she seized a piece of rag to beat him off; but he crept underneath her
thimble, and then peeped at her, and put his tongue out at her. She took
up the thimble, and would have seized him, but he hopped among the rags,
and as the mistress turned them over to find him, he stepped into a
crack in the table. "He-hee! Mistress!" cried he, sticking out his head,
and when she was just going to grasp him, he jumped into the
table-drawer. But in the end she caught him, and drove him out of the
house.

So he wandered on until he came to a great wood; and there he met a gang
of robbers that were going to rob the king's treasury. When they saw the
little tailor, they thought to themselves,

"Such a little fellow might easily creep through a key-hole, and serve
instead of a pick-lock."

"Holloa!" cried one, "you giant Goliath, will you come with us to the
treasure-chamber? you can slip in, and then throw us out the money."

Tom Thumb considered a little, but at last he consented and went with
them to the treasure-chamber. Then he looked all over the doors above
and below, but there was no crack to be seen; at last he found one broad
enough to let him pass, and he was getting through, when one of the
sentinels that stood before the door saw him, and said to the other,

"See what an ugly spider is crawling there! I will put an end to him."

"Let the poor creature alone," said the other, "it has done you no
harm."

So Tom Thumb got safely through the crack into the treasure-chamber, and
he opened the window beneath which the thieves were standing, and he
threw them out one dollar after another. Just as he had well settled to
the work, he heard the king coming to take a look at his treasure, and
so Tom Thumb had to creep away. The king presently remarked that many
good dollars were wanting, but could not imagine how they could have
been stolen, as the locks and bolts were in good order, and everything
seemed secure. And he went away, sayin