man came up to
him--we can guess who that was, eh?--and said to him: "You and your
bull-calf had better go away and seek your fortune."

So he went on and he went on and he went on, as far as I could tell you
till to-morrow night, and he went up to a farmhouse and begged a crust
of bread, and when he got back he broke it in two and gave half of it to
the bull-calf. And he went to another house and begged a bit of cheese
crud, and when he went back he wanted to give half of it to the
bull-calf. "No," says the bull-calf, "I'm going across the field, into
the wild-wood wilderness country, where there'll be tigers, leopards,
wolves, monkeys, and a fiery dragon, and I'll kill them all except the
fiery dragon, and he'll kill me."

The little boy did cry, and said: "Oh, no, my little bull-calf; I hope
he won't kill you."

"Yes, he will," said the little bull-calf, "so you climb up that tree,
so that no one can come nigh you but the monkeys, and if they come the
cheese crud will save you. And when I'm killed, the dragon will go away
for a bit, then you must come down the tree and skin me, and take out my
bladder and blow it out, and it will kill everything you hit with it. So
when the fiery dragon comes back, you hit it with my bladder and cut its
tongue out."

(We know there were fiery dragons in those days, like George and his
dragon in the legend; but, there! it's not the same world nowadays. The
world is turned topsy-turvy since then, like as if you'd turn it over
with a spade!)

Of course, he did all the little bull-calf told him. He climbed up the
tree, and the monkeys climbed up the tree after him. But he held the
cheese crud in his hand, and said: "I'll squeeze your heart like the
flint-stone." So the monkey cocked his eye as much as to say: "If you
can squeeze a flint-stone to make the juice come out of it, you can
squeeze me." But he didn't say anything, for a monkey's cunning, but
down he went. And all the while the little bull-calf was fighting all
the wild beasts on the ground, and the little lad was clapping his hands
up the tree, and calling out: "Go in, my little bull-calf! Well fought,
little bull-calf!" And he mastered everything except the fiery dragon,
but the fiery dragon killed the little bull-calf.

But the lad waited and waited till he saw the dragon go away, then he
came down and skinned the little bull-calf, and took out its bladder and
went after the dragon. And as he went on, what should he se