owns on their heads. Hop o' my
Thumb thought it was strange that the giant should be so kind, as he
had been told that the ogres eat children. So in the night he got up
softly and took off the little giantesses' crowns and put them on his
brothers' heads and his own, and lay down again. It was lucky for him
that he did so, for in the night the giant came up in the dark to
kill the boys, that they might be ready for the next day's breakfast.
He felt the beds, and finding the crowns on the boy's heads took them
for his own children, left them and went to the other bed and cut off
the heads of his daughters instead. Then he went back to bed.
Directly he was gone, Hop o' my Thumb and his brothers got up, stole
down stairs, opened the door and fled away from the castle. But they
did not go far. Hop o' my Thumb knew that the giant would come after
them in his seven-league boots. So they got into a hole in the side
of a hill and hid. Very soon after, they saw the giant coming at a
great pace in his wonderful boots; but he took such long steps that
he passed right over their heads. They were afraid to move out till
they had seen him go home again. So they remained quietly where they
were.

By-and-bye the giant, who had been many miles in an hour, came back
tired, and lay down on the hill-side and fell asleep. Then Hop o' my
Thumb got out of the hole, and pulled off the giant's seven-league
boots, and put them on his own feet. They fitted him exactly, for
being fairy boots they would grow large or small just as one liked.
He then got his brothers out of the hole, took them in his boots,
marched for home, and although it was a great distance, got there in
almost no time, but when he arrived at the house his father and
mother were not there. He then hastened to make inquiries for them,
and found they had been suspected of murdering their children,--who
had all disappeared suddenly--that they had owned to leaving them in
the wood, and that they were to be put to death for their crime. "We
must go and save them," he said. So he took his brothers into the
seven-league boots, and set out to the place where their parents were
in prison. They arrived only just in time, for the guards were
bringing out the woodsman and his wife to put them to death. Hop o'
my Thumb took off the boors, and all the children called out, "We are
alive! we are alive! Do not kill our mother and father."

Then there was great joy. The woodman and his wife wer