e across to the stable, where she led out the
blue-grey mare and jumped on its back, and her husband mounted before
her. Not long after, the giant awoke.

'Are you asleep?' asked he.

'Not yet,' answered the apple at the head of the bed, and the giant
turned over, and soon was snoring as loudly as before. By and bye he
called again.

'Are you asleep?'

'Not yet,' said the apple at the foot of the bed, and the giant was
satisfied. After a while, he called a third time, 'Are you asleep?'

'Not yet,' replied the apple in the kitchen, but when, in a few minutes,
he put the question for the fourth time and received an answer from the
apple outside the house door, he guessed what had happened, and ran to
the room to look for himself.

The bed was cold and empty!

* * * * *

'My father's breath is burning my back,' cried the girl, 'put thy hand
into the ear of the mare, and whatever thou findest there, throw it
behind thee.' And in the mare's ear there was a twig of sloe tree, and
as he threw it behind him there sprung up twenty miles of thornwood so
thick that scarce a weasel could go through it. And the giant, who was
striding headlong forwards, got caught in it, and it pulled his hair and
beard.

'This is one of my daughter's tricks,' he said to himself, 'but if I had
my big axe and my wood-knife, I would not be long making a way through
this,' and off he went home and brought back the axe and the wood-knife.

It took him but a short time to cut a road through the blackthorn, and
then he laid the axe and the knife under a tree.

'I will leave them there till I return,' he murmured to himself, but a
hoodie crow, which was sitting on a branch above, heard him.

'If thou leavest them,' said the hoodie, 'we will steal them.'

'You will,' answered the giant, 'and I must take them home.' So he took
them home, and started afresh on his journey.

'My father's breath is burning my back,' cried the girl at midday. 'Put
thy finger in the mare's ear and throw behind thee whatever thou findest
in it,' and the king's son found a splinter of grey stone, and threw it
behind him, and in a twinkling twenty miles of solid rock lay between
them and the giant.

'My daughter's tricks are the hardest things that ever met me,' said the
giant, 'but if I had my lever and my crowbar, I would not be long in
making my way through this rock also,' but as he had _not_ got them, he
had to go home and fetch