appear quite commonplace to all with a
feeling heart or a well-balanced brain.

When the subscription was finished there was a thousand pounds, and a
committee was formed to settle what should be done with it. A third of
it went to pay for a banquet to the mayor and corporation; another third
was spent in buying a gold collar with a dragon on it for the mayor and
gold medals with dragons on them for the corporation; and what was left
went in committee expenses.

So there was nothing for the blacksmith except the laurel wreath and the
knowledge that it really was he who had saved the town. But after this
things went a little better with the blacksmith. To begin with, the baby
did not cry so much as it had before. Then the rich lady who owned the
goat was so touched by John's noble action that she ordered a complete
set of shoes at 2 shillings, 4 pence, and even made it up to 2
shillings, 6 pence, in grateful recognition of his public-spirited
conduct. Then tourists used to come in breaks from quite a long way off,
and pay twopence each to go down the steps and peep through the iron
grating at the rusty dragon in the dungeon--and it was threepence extra
for each party if the blacksmith let off colored fire to see it by,
which, as the fire was extremely short, was twopence-halfpenny clear
profit every time. And the blacksmith's wife used to provide teas at
ninepence a head, and altogether things grew brighter week by week.

The baby--named John, after his father, and called Johnnie for
short--began presently to grow up. He was great friends with Tina, the
daughter of the whitesmith, who lived nearly opposite. She was a dear
little girl with yellow pigtails and blue eyes, and she was tired of
hearing the story of how Johnnie, when he was a baby, had been minded by
a real dragon.

The two children used to go together to peep through the iron grating at
the dragon, and sometimes they would hear him mew piteously. And they
would light a halfpenny's worth of colored fire to look at him by. And
they grew older and wiser.

At last one day the mayor and corporation, hunting the hare in their
gold gowns, came screaming back to the town gates with the news that a
lame, humpy giant, as big as a tin church, was coming over the marshes
toward the town.

"We're lost," said the mayor. "I'd give a thousand pounds to anyone who
could keep that giant out of the town. I know what he eats--by his
teeth."

No one seemed to know what