on
the table. So, after a good laugh, Jack and his companions went in and
took possession of the house and the gold.

Now Jack was a wise boy, and he knew that the robbers would come back in
the dead of the night to get their gold, and so when it came time to go
to bed he put the cat in the rocking-chair, and he put the dog under the
table, and he put the goat upstairs, and he put the bull in the cellar,
and bade the rooster fly up on to the roof.

Then he went to bed.

Now sure enough, in the dead of the night, the robbers sent one man back
to the house to look after their money. But before long he came back in
a great fright and told them a fearsome tale!

"I went back to the house," said he, "and went in and tried to sit down
in the rocking-chair, and there was an old woman knitting there, and
she--oh my!--stuck her knitting-needles into me."

(_That was the cat, you know._)

"Then I went to the table to look after the money, but there was a
shoemaker under the table, and my! how he stuck his awl into me."

(_That was the dog, you know._)

"So I started to go upstairs, but there was a man up there threshing,
and goody! how he knocked me down with his flail!"

(_That was the goat, you know._)

"Then I started to go down to the cellar, but--oh dear me!--there was a
man down there chopping wood, and he knocked me up and he knocked me
down just terrible with his axe."

(_That was the bull, you know._)

"But I shouldn't have minded all that if it hadn't been for an awful
little fellow on the top of the house by the kitchen chimney, who kept
a-hollering and hollering, 'Cook him in a stew! Cook him in a stew! Cook
him in a stew!'"

(_And that, of course, was the cock-a-doodle-doo._)

Then the robbers agreed that they would rather lose their gold than meet
with such a fate; so they made off, and Jack next morning went gaily
home with his booty. And each of the animals carried a portion of it.
The cat hung a bag on its tail (a cat when it walks always carries its
tail stiff), the dog on his collar, the goat and the bull on their
horns, but Jack made the rooster carry a golden guinea in its beak to
prevent it from calling all the time:

"Cock-a-doodle-doo,
Cook him in a stew!"

THE BOGEY-BEAST

There was once a woman who was very, very cheerful, though she had
little to make her so; for she was old, and poor, and lonely. She lived
in a little bit of a cottage and earned a scant living by ru