The Giant cannot understand how Ned can eat cheese.

[Illustration]

MAGIC FOOD

"PUSS IN BOOTS, who had reached the castle in advance of the royal
party, opened the door and said with a low bow to the wicked ogre:

"'I hear you have the power to change yourself into any animal.'

"'That is true,' answered the ogre, so pleased that at once he turned
himself into a lion.

"'I doubt if you can become as small as a mouse,' said Puss in Boots.

"Instantly the ogre changed himself into a mouse, whereupon Puss in
Boots pounced upon him and ate him up.

"At that moment up drove the coach. Throwing open the castle door, Puss
in Boots said with a hospitable bow:

"'Welcome to the castle of my Lord of Carabas.' And, to make a long
story short," laughed Ned, "his master married the King's daughter and
lived happily ever after."

"Whew!" gasped the giant. "He certainly was a wonderful cat," and he
looked anxiously at the Magic Axe.

Presently Ned began to feel hungry, and opening his knapsack, took out
his bread and cheese.

"What is that white stuff?" asked the giant, who had never seen cheese
before.

"That is a stone," answered Ned, commencing to eat it with a hungry
appetite.

"Do you eat stones?" asked the giant.

"Oh yes," answered Ned. "That's my regular food, which explains why I'm
not so big as you who eat oxen; but it's also the reason why, little as
I am, I am ten times as strong as you are. Now take me to your house."

The giant looked at the Magic Axe which had so nearly destroyed his
forest, and then at Ned eating a stone with apparent relish.

"I will," he said, and humbly led the way to his monstrous cabin.

"Now listen," said Ned to the giant after they were fairly seated, "one
of us must be the master, and the other the servant. If I can't do
whatever you do, I am to be your slave; if you're not able to do
whatever I do, you are to be mine."

"Agreed," said the giant. "I'd be tickled to death to have a little
servant like you. It's too much work for me to think, and you have
brains enough for both. Well, let's start the trial. Here are my two
buckets,--go and get the water to make the soup!"

Ned looked at the buckets, the tops of which he couldn't even see, for
they were two enormous hogsheads, ten feet high and six broad. It would
have been much easier for him to drown himself in them than to move
them.

"Ho, ho!" shouted the giant. "Do what I do and get the water."

"What's the g