d their nuts they sat round the fire and began to tell stories.

'I will crack a nut,' said the Shifty Lad.

'You shall not,' cried the Black Gallows Bird; 'they will hear you.'

'I don't care,' answered the Shifty Lad. 'I never spend Hallowe'en yet
without cracking a nut'; and he cracked one.

'Some one is cracking nuts up there,' said one of the merry-makers in
the farmhouse. 'Come quickly, and we will see who it is.'

He spoke loudly, and the Black Gallows Bird heard, and ran out of the
loft, dragging the big leather hide after him which the Shifty Lad had
sewed to his coat.

'He is stealing my hide!' shouted the farmer, and they all darted after
him; but he was too swift for them, and at last he managed to tear the
hide from his coat, and then he flew like a hare till he reached his old
hiding-place. But all this took a long time, and meanwhile the Shifty
Lad got down from the loft, and searched the house till he found the
chest with the gold and silver in it, concealed behind a load of straw
and covered with loaves of bread and a great cheese. The Shifty Lad
slung the money bags round his shoulders and took the bread and the
cheese under his arm, then set out quietly for the Black Rogue's house.

'Here you are at last, you villain!' cried his master in great wrath.
'But I will be revenged on you.'

'It is all right,' replied the Shifty Lad calmly. 'I have brought what
you wanted'; and he laid the things he was carrying down on the ground.

'Ah! you are the better thief,' said the Black Rogue's wife; and the
Black Rogue added:

'Yes, it is you who are the clever boy'; and they divided the spoil and
the Black Gallows Bird had one half and the Shifty Lad the other half.

A few weeks after that the Black Gallows Bird had news of a wedding that
was to be held near the town; and the bridegroom had many friends and
everybody sent him a present. Now a rich farmer who lived up near the
moor thought that nothing was so useful to a young couple when they
first began to keep house as a fine fat sheep, so he bade his shepherd
go off to the mountain where the flock were feeding, and bring him
back the best he could find. And the shepherd chose out the largest and
fattest of the sheep and the one with the whitest fleece; then he tied
its feet together and put it across his shoulder, for he had a long way
to go.

That day, the Shifty Lad happened to be wandering over the moor, when he
saw the man with the sheep on his