t be silly!" said his wife. "It's the bones of the little boy you
had for supper that I'm boiling down for soup! Come, eat your breakfast,
there's a good ogre!"

So the ogre ate his three sheep, and when he had done he went to a big
oaken chest and took out three big bags of golden pieces. These he put
on the table, and began to count their contents while his wife cleared
away the breakfast things. And by and by his head began to nod, and at
last he began to snore, and snored so loud that the whole house shook.

Then Jack nipped out of the oven and, seizing one of the bags of gold,
crept away, and ran along the straight, wide, shining white road as fast
as his legs would carry him till he came to the beanstalk. He couldn't
climb down it with the bag of gold, it was so heavy, so he just flung
his burden down first, and, helter-skelter, climbed after it.

And when he came to the bottom, there was his mother picking up gold
pieces out of the garden as fast as she could; for, of course, the bag
had burst.

"Laws-a-mercy me!" she says. "Wherever have you been? See! It's been
rainin' gold!"

"No, it hasn't," began Jack. "I climbed up--"

Then he turned to look for the beanstalk; but, lo and behold! it wasn't
there at all! So he knew, then, it was all real magic.

After that they lived happily on the gold pieces for a long time, and
the bed-ridden father got all sorts of nice things to eat; but, at last,
a day came when Jack's mother showed a doleful face as she put a big
yellow sovereign into Jack's hand and bade him be careful marketing,
because there was not one more in the coffer. After that they must
starve.

That night Jack went supperless to bed of his own accord. If he couldn't
make money, he thought, at any rate he could eat less money. It was a
shame for a big boy to stuff himself and bring no grist to the mill.

He slept like a top, as boys do when they don't overeat themselves, and
when he woke....

Hey, presto! the whole room showed greenish, and there was a curtain of
leaves over the window! Another bean had grown in the night, and Jack
was up it like a lamp-lighter before you could say knife.

This time he didn't take nearly so long climbing until he reached the
straight, wide, white road, and in a trice he found himself before the
tall white house, where on the wide white steps the ogre's wife was
standing with the black porridge-pot in her hand.

And this time Jack was as bold as brass. "Good-mor