wn house at the foot of a hill. They were very poor, for the boy's
father was dead, and the rich man who lived at the top of the hill had
taken everything that they had, except one cow.

At last it came that there was nothing in the house to eat, and the
mother said: "Now we will have to sell the cow."

So she told the little boy to take the cow to town and sell it, and the
boy put a rope around the cow's neck and started off down the road.

He had not gone far before he met a man with a cloak over him and
carrying something under it. He asked the little boy where he was going,
and the boy told him that there was nothing to eat in the house and he
was trying to sell the cow.

"Will you sell her to me?" asked the man.

"What will you give me for her?" asked the little boy.

"I will give you an iron pot," said the man.

Now, the little boy knew that he ought not to sell the cow for an iron
pot, and he quickly said he would not, but as he spoke he heard a tiny
voice under the man's cloak saying: "Buy me! Buy me!" So he told the
stranger that he might have the cow.

The man took the rope in his hands, and gave the little boy the iron
pot, and he took it and went home again.

"And what did you get for the cow?" asked his mother.

By this time the boy was very much ashamed of having sold the cow for an
iron pot, and he hung his head when his mother asked him what he had
gotten. They were about to throw the pot away, for, as the mother said,
there was nothing to cook in it, when they heard a tiny voice say: "Put
me over the fire and put in water."

So the mother put the little pot over the fire and put in water, which,
indeed, was all that she had to put in. And soon the water in the pot
began to bubble and to boil, and the little pot said: "I skip! I skip!"

"How far do you skip, little Pot?" asked the mother.

"I skip to the house of the rich man at the top of the hill," said the
pot.

And the little pot began to skip, skip, first on one of its three legs
and then on another, skippity skip, skippity skip, until it came to the
house of the rich man at the top of the hill, and it skipped right into
the kitchen of the rich man's house where his wife was making a pudding.
All at once she looked up and saw the little iron pot on the table,
where it had skipped in at the window, and right in front of her, and
she said:

"Oh, where did you come from, little Pot? You are just what I want to
put my pudding in."

S