ed to the business, tucked himself up on the hay
and went to sleep, telling the boy to wake him when the merry-makers had
departed. But the Shifty Lad, who could keep still no longer, crept down
to the cowshed and loosened the heads of the cattle which were tied, and
they began to kick each other and bellow, and made such a noise that
the company in the farmhouse ran out to tie them up again. Then the
Shifty Lad entered the room and picked up a big handful of nuts, and
returned to the loft, where the Black Rogue was still sleeping. At first
the Shifty Lad shut his eyes too, but very soon he sat up, and, taking a
big needle and thread from his pocket, he sewed the hem of the Black
Gallows Bird's coat to a heavy piece of bullock's hide that was hanging
at his back.

By this time the cattle were all tied up again, but as the people could
not find their nuts they sat round the fire and began to tell stories.

'I will crack a nut,' said the Shifty Lad.

'You shall not,' cried the Black Gallows Bird; 'they will hear you.'

'I don't care,' answered the Shifty Lad. 'I never spent Hallowe'en yet
without cracking a nut'; and he cracked one.

* * * * *

'Some one is cracking nuts up there,' said one of the merry-makers in
the farmhouse. 'Come quickly, and we will see who it is.'

He spoke loudly, and the Black Gallows Bird heard, and ran out of the
loft, dragging the big leather hide after him which the Shifty Lad had
sewed to his coat.

'He is stealing my hide!' shouted the farmer, and they all darted after
him; but he was too swift for them, and at last he managed to tear the
hide from his coat, and then he flew like a hare till he reached his old
hiding-place. But all this took a long time, and meanwhile the Shifty
Lad got down from the loft, and searched the house till he found the
chest with the gold and silver in it, concealed behind a load of straw
and covered with loaves of bread and a great cheese. The Shifty Lad
slung the money bags round his shoulders and took the bread and the
cheese under his arm, then set out quietly for the Black Rogue's house.

'Here you are at last, you villain!' cried his master in great wrath.
'But I will be revenged on you.'

'It is all right,' replied the Shifty Lad calmly. 'I have brought what
you wanted'; and he laid the things he was carrying down on the ground.

'Ah! you are the better thief,' said the Black Rogue's wife; and the
Black Rogue added