open, and there he was in a joiner's shop. "You're a likely
lad," said the joiner; "serve me for a twelvemonths and a day and I will
pay you well." So he agreed, and served the carpenter for a year and a
day. "Now," said the master, "I will give you your wage"; and he
presented him with a table, telling him he had but to say, "Table, be
covered," and at once it would be spread with lots to eat and drink.

Jack hitched the table on his back, and away he went with it till he
came to the inn. "Well, host," shouted he, putting down the table, "my
dinner to-day, and that of the best."

"Very sorry, sir," says the host, "but there is nothing in the house but
ham and eggs."

"No ham and eggs for me!" exclaimed Jack. "I can do better than
that.--Come, my table, be covered!"

So at once the table was spread with turkey and sausages, roast mutton,
potatoes, and greens. The innkeeper opened his eyes, but he said
nothing, not he! But that night he fetched down from his attic a table
very like the magic one, and exchanged the two, and Jack, none the
wiser, next morning hitched the worthless table on to his back and
carried it home.

"Now, father, may I marry my lass?" he asked.

"Not unless you can keep her," replied the father.

"Look here!" exclaimed Jack. "Father, I have a table which does all my
bidding."

"Let me see it," said the old man.

The lad set it in the middle of the room, and bade it be covered; but
all in vain, the table remained bare. Then, in a rage, the father caught
the warming-pan down from the wall and warmed his son's back with it so
that the boy fled howling from the house, and ran and ran till he came
to a river and tumbled in. A man picked him out and bade him help in
making a bridge over the river by casting a tree across. Then Jack
climbed up to the top of the tree and threw his weight on it, so that
when the man had rooted the tree up, Jack and the tree-head dropped on
the farther bank.

[Illustration: The fisherman and his wife had no children, and they were
just longing for a baby]

"Thank you," said the man; "and now for what you have done I will pay
you"; so saying, he tore a branch from the tree, and fettled it up into
a club with his knife. "There," exclaimed he; "take this stick, and when
you say to it, 'Up, stick, and bang him,' it will knock any one down who
angers you."

The lad was overjoyed to get this stick, for he had begun to see he had
been tricked by the innkeeper, so awa