ays Jack, "and got along very well indeed."

"Jack," says he, "show me your two hands;" and when Jack held out his
two hands, the Giant saw one of his fingers gone. He got black in the
face with rage when he saw this, and he said, "Jack, did I not warn
you on the peril of your life not to go into that stable?"

Poor Jack pleaded all he could, and said he did not mean to, but
curiosity got the best of him, and he thought he would open the door
and peep in.

Says the Giant, "No man before ever opened that stable door and lived
to tell it, and you, too, would be a dead man this minute only for one
thing. Your father's father did my father a great service once. I am
the man who never forgets a good thing, and for that service," says
he, "I give you your life and pardon this time; but if you ever do the
like again, you won't live."

Jack, he promised that surely and surely he would never do the like
again. His supper he got that night, and to bed. And at early morning
again the Giant had him up, and, "Jack," says he, "I must be off to
the other end of the world again and fight the Giant of the Four
Winds. You know your duty is to look after this house and place and
set everything in order about it, and go everywhere you like, only
don't open the stable door or go into the stable, on the peril of your
life."

"I will mind all that," says Jack.

Then that morning again the Giant visited the stable before he went
away. And after he had gone, to his work went Jack, wandering through
the house, cleaning and setting everything in order about it, and out
into the yard he went, and fixed and arranged everything out there,
except the stable. He stood before the stable door a good while this
day, and says he to himself, "I wonder how the bear and the mare are
doing, and what the Giant did when he went in to see them? I would
give a great deal to know," says he. "I will take a peep in."

Into the ring of the door he put his finger, and turned it, and looked
in, and there he saw the mare and the bear standing as on the day
before and neither of them eating. In Jack steps. "And no wonder, poor
creatures," says he, "you don't eat, when that is the way the Giant
blundered," he says, after he saw the meat before the mare and the hay
before the bear this time also.

Jack then changed the food, putting the hay before the mare and the
meat before the bear, as it should be, and very soon both the mare and
the bear were eating heartily