Page:The Allies Fairy Book.djvu/61

 them home.” He returned and left them at the house. At Scotch the heat of day the giant’s daughter felt her father’s breath burning her back.

“Put thy finger in the filly’s ear, and throw behind thee whatever thou findest in it.” He got a splinter of grey stone, and in a twinkling there were twenty miles, by breadth and height, of great grey rock behind them. The giant came full pelt, but past the rock he could not go.

“The tricks of my own daughter are the hardest things that ever met me,” says the giant; “but if I had my lever and my mighty mattock, I would not be long making my way through this rock also.”

There was no help for it but to turn the chase for them, and he was the boy to split the stones. He was not long making a road through the rock. “I will leave the tools here, and I will return no more.”

“If thou leave them,” said the hoodie, “we will steal them.”

“Do that if thou wilt; there is no time to go back.” At the time of breaking the watch, the giant’s daughter said that she was feeling her father’s breath burning her back. “Look in the filly’s ear, king’s son, or else we are lost.” He did so, and it was a bladder of water that was in her ear this time. He threw it behind him, and there was a freshwater loch, twenty miles in length and breadth, behind them.

The giant came on, but with the speed he had on him he was in the middle of the loch, and he went under, and he rose no more.

On the next day the young companions were come in sight of his father’s house. “Now,” said she, my father is drowned, and he won’t trouble us any more; but before we go any farther,” says she, “go thou to thy father’s house and tell that thou hast the like of me; but this is thy lot, let neither man nor creature kiss thee, for if thou dost thou