it woke the ogre.

"Where's my hen?" he shouted, and his wife came rushing in, and they
both rushed to the door; but Jack had got the better of them by a good
start, and all they could see was a little figure right away down the
wide white road, holding a big, scrawing, cackling, fluttering black hen
by the legs!

How Jack got down the beanstalk he never knew. It was all wings, and
leaves, and feathers, and cacklings; but get down he did, and there was
his mother wondering if the sky was going to fall!

But the very moment Jack touched ground he called out, "Lay!" and the
black hen ceased cackling and laid a great, big, shiny, yellow, golden
egg.

So every one was satisfied; and from that moment everybody had
everything that money could buy. For, whenever they wanted anything,
they just said, "Lay!" and the black hen provided them with gold.

But Jack began to wonder if he couldn't find something else besides
money in the sky. So one fine moonlight midsummer night he refused his
supper, and before he went to bed stole out to the garden with a big
watering-can and watered the ground under his window; for, thought he,
"there must be two more beans somewhere, and perhaps it is too dry for
them to grow." Then he slept like a top.

And, lo and behold! when he woke, there was the green light shimmering
through his room, and there he was in an instant on the beanstalk,
climbing, climbing, climbing for all he was worth.

But this time he knew better than to ask for his breakfast; for the
ogre's wife would be sure to recognise him. So he just hid in some
bushes beside the great white house, till he saw her in the scullery,
and then he slipped out and hid himself in the copper; for he knew she
would be sure to look in the oven first thing.

And by and by he heard--

Thump! THUMP! THUMP!

And peeping through a crack in the copper-lid, he could see the ogre
stalk in with three huge oxen strung at his belt. But this time, no
sooner had the ogre got into the house than he began shouting:

"_Fee-fi-fo-fum,
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Be he alive, or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread._"

For, see you, the copper-lid didn't fit tight like the oven door, and
ogres have noses like a dog's for scent.

"Well, I declare, so do I!" exclaimed the ogre's wife. "It will be that
horrid boy who stole the bag of gold and the hen. If so, he's hid in the
oven!"

But when she o