lf easy," says the boy; "perhaps it's too quick I'd
come down to you."

"I won't be talking to you any longer," says the giant. He got a
leverage on the tree and drew it up out of the roots.

"Go down, black thong, and squeeze that fellow," says the lad, for he
remembered the advice of the bracket bull. On the instant the black
thong leaped out of his hand, and squeezed the giant so hard that the
two eyes were going out on his head, for stronger was the power of the
bull than the power of the giant. The giant was not able to put a stir
out of himself, and he promised anything at all--only to save his life
for him. "Anything at all you want," says he to the lad, "you must get
it from me."

"I'm not asking anything at all except the loan of the sword that's
under your bed," says he.

"I give it to you, and welcome," says the giant. He went in, and brought
out the sword with him.

"Try it on the three biggest trees that are in the wood, and you won't
feel it in your hand going through them," says the giant.

"I don't see any tree in the wood bigger or uglier than yourself," says
he, drawing the sword and whipping the head off him, so that he sent it
seven furrows and seven ridges with that stroke.

"If I were to get on the body again," said the head, and it talking,
"and the men of the world wouldn't get me off the trunk again."

"I'll take good care myself of that," says the lad.

When he drove the cows home in the evening, they had that much milk that
they had not half enough of vessels, and two coopers were obliged to
make new vessels to hold the quantity of milk they had.

"You're the best lad that ever I met," says the gentleman, and he was
thankful to him.

The giants used to put--each man of them--a shout of him every evening.
The people only heard two shouts that evening. "There's some change in
the caher[2] to-night," said the gentleman, when he heard the two
shouts.

"Oh," says the lad, "I saw one of them going away by himself to-day, and
he did not come home yet."

On the next day the lad drove out his cattle until he came to the big
stone wall, and he threw a gap in it, and let the cattle into the same
place. He went up into a tree and began throwing down the apples. The
second giant came running, and said, "What's the meaning of throwing my
wall and letting in your cattle on my estate? Get down out of that at
once. You killed my brother yesterday."

"Go down, black thong, and bind that one,"