them. Then it took him but a short time to hew
his way through the rock.

'I will leave the tools here,' he murmured aloud when he had finished.

'If thou leavest them, we will steal them,' said a hoodie who was
perched on a stone above him, and the giant answered:

'Steal them if thou wilt; there is no time to go back.'

* * * * *

'My father's breath is burning my back,' cried the girl; 'look in the
mare's ear, king's son, or we are lost,' and he looked, and found a tiny
bladder full of water, which he threw behind him, and it became a great
loch. And the giant, who was striding on so fast, could not stop
himself, and he walked right into the middle and was drowned.

The blue-grey mare galloped on like the wind, and the next day the
king's son came in sight of his father's house.

'Get down and go in,' said the bride, 'and tell them that thou hast
married me. But take heed that neither man nor beast kiss thee, for then
thou wilt cease to remember me at all.'

'I will do thy bidding,' answered he, and left her at the gate. All who
met him bade him welcome, and he charged his father and mother not to
kiss him, but as he greeted them his old greyhound leapt on his neck,
and kissed him on the mouth. And after that he did not remember the
giant's daughter.

All that day she sat on a well which was near the gate, waiting,
waiting, but the king's son never came. In the darkness she climbed up
into an oak tree that shadowed the well, and there she lay all night,
waiting, waiting.

On the morrow, at midday, the wife of a shoemaker who dwelt near the
well went to draw water for her husband to drink, and she saw the shadow
of the girl in the tree, and thought it was her own shadow.

[Illustration: So the Giant Was Drowned in the MIDDLE OF THE LAKE]

'How handsome I am, to be sure,' said she, gazing into the well, and as
she stooped to behold herself better, the jug struck against the stones
and broke in pieces, and she was forced to return to her husband without
the water, and this angered him.

'Thou hast turned crazy,' said he in wrath. 'Go thou, my daughter, and
fetch me a drink,' and the girl went, and the same thing befell her as
had befallen her mother.

'Where is the water?' asked the shoemaker, when she came back, and as
she held nothing save the handle of the jug he went to the well himself.
He too saw the reflection of the woman in the tree, but looked up to
discover whe