ll carry
you all over, if you like." Now, though the giant smiled and was very
polite, the King knew enough of the ways of giants to think it wiser to
have a hard and fast bargain. So he said, quite curt, "What's your pay?"

"Pay?" echoed the giant, with a grin, "what do you take me for? Give me
Nix Naught Nothing, and I'll do the job with a glad heart."

Now the King felt just a trifle ashamed at the giant's generosity; so he
said, "Certainly, certainly. I'll give you nix naught nothing and my
thanks into the bargain."

So the giant carried them safely over the stream and past the
whirlpools, and the King hastened homewards. If he was glad to see his
dear wife, the Queen, you may imagine how he felt when she showed him
his young son, tall and strong for his age.

"And what's your name, young sir?" he asked of the child fast clasped in
his arms.

"Nix Naught Nothing," answered the boy; "that's what they call me till
my father gives me a name."

Well! the King nearly dropped the child, he was so horrified. "What
have I done?" he cried. "I promised to give nix naught nothing to the
giant who carried us over the whirlpools where the nixies and
water-wraiths live."

At this the Queen wept and wailed; but being a clever woman she thought
out a plan whereby to save her son. So she said to her husband the King,
"If the giant comes to claim his promise, we will give him the
hen-wife's youngest boy. She has so many she will not mind if we give
her a crown piece, and the giant will never know the difference."

Now sure enough the very next morning the giant appeared to claim Nix
Naught Nothing, and they dressed up the hen-wife's boy in the Prince's
clothes and wept and wailed when the giant, fine and satisfied, carried
his prize off on his back. But after a while he came to a big stone and
sat down to ease his shoulders. And he fell a-dozing. Now, when he woke,
he started up in a fluster, and called out:

"Hodge, Hodge, on my shoulders! Say
What d'ye make the time o' day?"

And the hen-wife's little boy replied:

"Time that my mother the hen-wife takes
The eggs for the wise Queen's breakfast cakes!"

Then the giant saw at once the trick that had been played on him, and he
threw the hen-wife's boy on the ground, so that his head hit on the
stone and he was killed.

Then the giant strode back to the palace in a tower of a temper, and
demanded "Nix Naught Nothing." So this time they dressed up the
gardene