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_Dick and the Beanstalk_ was written by Walter de la Mare
(1873-1956), and was included in his _Collected Stories for
Children_ (1947).

Title: Collected Stories for Children -- Dick and the Beanstalk
Date of first publication: 1947
Author: Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)
Date first posted: 1 July 2007
Date last updated: 1 July 2007
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #2

This ebook was produced by: Dr Mark Bear Akrigg




Dick And The Beanstalk

by Walter de la Mare (from his _Collected Stories for Children_
[1947])




In the county of Gloucestershire there lived with his father, who
was a farmer, a boy called Dick. Their farm was not one of the
biggest of the Gloucestershire farms thereabouts. It was of the
middle size, between large and small. But the old house had stood
there, quiet and peaceful, for at least two hundred years, and it
was built of sound Cotswold stone. It had fine chimney stacks and
a great roof. From his window under one of its gables Dick looked
out across its ploughland and meadows to distant hills, while
nearer at hand its barns, stables and pigsties clustered around
it, like chicks round a hen.

Dick was an only son and had no mother. His father--chiefly for
company's sake--had never sent him to school. But being a boy
pretty quick in his wits, Dick had all but taught himself, with
his father's help, to read and write and figure a little. And, by
keeping his eyes and his ears open wherever he went, by asking
questions and, if need be, finding out the answers for himself,
he had learned a good deal else besides.

When he was a child he had been sung all the old rhymes and told
most of the country tales of those parts by his mother, and by an
old woman who came to the farm when there was sewing to be done,
sheets to be hemmed, or shirts to be made. She was a deaf, poring
old woman, but very skilful with her needle; and he never wearied
of listening to the tales she told him; though at times, and
particularly on dark windy nights in the winter, he would at last
creep off rather anxious and shuddering to bed.

These tales not only stayed in Dick's head, but lived there. He
not only remembered them, but thought about them; and he
sometimes dreamed about them. He not only knew almost by heart
what they told, but would please himself by fancying what else
had happened to the people in them after the tales were over or
before they had begun. He could not only find his way about in a
story-book, chapter by chapter, page by page, but if it told only
about the inside of a house he would begin to wonder what its
garden was like--and in imagination would find his way out into
it and then perhaps try to explore even further. It was in this
way, for example, that Dick had come to his own conclusions on
which finger Aladdin wore his ring, and the colour of his uncle
the Magician's eyes; on what too at last had happened to the old
Fairy Woman in _The Sleeping Beauty_. After, that is, she had
ridden off on her white ass into the forest when the magic
spindle had begun to spread the deathly slumber over her enemies
that was not to be broken for a hundred years. He knew why she
didn't afterwards come to the Wedding!

And as for Blue-beard's stone-turreted and many-windowed castle,
with its chestnut gallery to the east, and its muddy moat with
its carp, under the cypresses, Dick knew a good deal more about
that than ever Fatima did! So again, if he found out that Old
Mother Hubbard had a _cat_, he could tell you the cat's name.
And he could describe the crown that Molly Whuppie was crowned
with when she became Queen, even to its last emerald. He was what
is called a _lively_ reader.

Dick often wished he had been born the youngest of three
brothers, for then he would have gone out into the world early to
seek his fortune. And in a few years, and after many adventures,
he would have come back again, his pockets crammed with money, a
magic Table on his back or a Cap of Invisibility in his pocket,
and have lived happily with his father ever afterwards. He had
long been certain too that if only he could spruce up his courage
and be off if but a little way, even if only into one of the next
counties, Warwickshire or Wiltshire, Monmouthshire or Somerset,
adventures would be sure to come. He itched to try his luck.

But there was a hindrance. His father would hardly let him out of
his sight. And this was natural. Poor man, he had no daughters,
so Dick was his only child as well as his only son. And his
mother was dead. Apart then from his farm, the farmer had but one
thought in the world--Dick himself. Still, he would at times give
him leave to jog off alone to the nearest market town on an
errand or two. And going alone for Dick was not the same thing as
not going alone.

Sometimes Dick went further. He had an uncle, a very fat man, who
was a mason at Moreton-in-the-Marsh, and an old widowed aunt who
had a windmill and seven cats at Stow-on-the-Wold. He would visit
them. He had also been to the Saffron Fair at Cirencester; and
had stayed till the lights came out and the flares of the
gingerbread stalls and Merry-go-rounds. But as for the great
cities of Gloucestershire--Gloucester itself, or Bristol; or
further still, Exeter, or further the other way, London
 (where his old friend and namesake Dick Whittington had been
Lord Mayor three-and-a-half times)--Dick had never walked the
streets of any of them, except in his story-books or in dreams.
However, those who wait long enough seldom wait in vain.

On his next birthday after the one on which he had gone to the
Saffron Fair, his father bought him for a birthday present a
rough-coated pony. It was hog-maned--short and bristly; it was
docktailed, stood about eleven hands high, and was called Jock.
His father gave Dick leave to ride about the country when his
morning's work was done, 'just to see the world a bit', as he
said, and to learn to fend for himself. And it was a bargain and
promise between them that unless any mischance or uncommon piece
of good fortune should keep him late, Dick would always be home
again before night came down. Great talks of the afternoon's and
evening's doings the two of them would have over their supper
together in the farmhouse kitchen. His father began to look
forward to them as much as Dick looked forward to them himself.
Very good friends they were together, Dick and his father.

Now one winter morning--in the middle of January--of the next
year, Dick asked leave of his father to have the next whole fine
day all to himself. The weather had been frosty, the evening
skies a fine shepherd's red, and everything promised well. He
told his father he wanted to press on further afield than he had
before--'beyond those hills over there'. And as the days were now
short, he must be off early, since there were few hours after
noon before dark. His father gave him leave, but warned him to be
careful of what company he got into and against any folly or
foolhardiness. 'Don't run into mischief, my son,' he said, 'nor
let mischief run into you!' Dick laughed and promised.

Next day, before dawn, while still the stars were shining, he got
up, put on his clothes, crept downstairs, ate a hurried breakfast
and cut himself off a hunch of bread and meat in the larder to
put in his pocket. Then he scribbled a few lines to his father to
tell him that he had gone, pinned the paper to the kitchen table,
and having saddled up his pony set out due north-west into the
morning.

There had been a very sharp frost during the night. It was as
though a gigantic miller had stalked over the fields scattering
his meal as he went. The farm ruts were hard and sharp as stone,
and, as they jogged along, Jock's hoofs splintered the frozen
puddles lying between them as if they were fine thin glass. Soon
the sun rose, clear as a furnace, though with so little heat yet
that its beams were not strong enough even to melt the rime that
lay in the hollows and under the woods.

Now on the Friday before this, Dick had come to a valley between
two round hills, and had looked out beyond it. But it had been
too late in the day to go further. He reached this valley again
about ten o'clock of the morning, and pushed on, trotting
steadily along between its wooded slopes, following a faint
overgrown grass-track until at last the track died away, and he
came out on the other side. Here was much emptier, flatter
country, though not many miles distant snow-topped hills began
again. These hills were strange to him, and he had no notion
where he was.

The unploughed fields were larger here than any he was accustomed
to, and were overgrown with weeds. In these a multitude of winter
birds were feeding. The hedges were ragged and untended, and
there was not a house to be seen. Dick got off Jock's back and
took out his lunch. Uncommonly good it tasted in the sharp cold
air. And as he ate--sitting on a green knoll in the thin pale
sunshine--he looked about him. And he saw a long way off what at
first sight he took to be a column of smoke mounting up into the
sky. He watched it awhile, marvelling. But there was no show of
fire or of motion in it. It hung still and glimmering between the
frosty earth and the blue of space. If not smoke, what could it
be? Dick pondered in vain.

Having hastily finished his bread and meat, and feeling much the
better for it, he mounted again and set off as fast as Jock could
carry him in its direction. About three o'clock in the afternoon
he drew near. And he found himself at last in a hollow where was
an old tumbledown cottage, its thatch broken, its chimney fallen,
its garden run wild. And growing within a few paces of this old
cottage--towering up high above it, its top beyond view--was a
huge withered tangle of what looked like a coarse kind of
withy-wind or creeper. It went twisting and writhing
corkscrew-fashion straight up into the air and so out of sight.
Dick could not guess how far, because the sunlight so dazzled his
eyes. But when he examined this great growth closely, and its
gigantic pods of dried-up seeds as big as large kidney-shaped
pebble-stones that still clung to its stem, he decided that it
must be beans.

Never had he seen anything to match these beans. Who could have
planted them, and when, and for what purpose? And where was he
gone to? And then, in a flash, Dick realised at last where he
himself was, and what he was looking at. There could be no doubt
in the world. This was _Jack's_ old cottage. This was where Jack
had lived with his mother--before he met the friendly butcher on
his way to market. And this huge tangled ladder here--which must
have sprung up again as mighty as ever after Jack had cut it down
and the Giant had fallen headlong--was Jack's famous Beanstalk.

Poor old woman, thought Dick. Jack's mother must be dead and gone
ages and ages ago. And Jack too. He spied through the broken wall
where a window had been. The hearth was full of old nettles. The
thatch was riddled with abandoned bird-nests and rat-holes. There
was not a sound in earth or sky; nor any trace of human being. He
sat down on a hummock in the sun not far from the walls, and once
more gazed up at the Beanstalk; and down again; and in his mind
Dick went through all Jack's strange adventures. He knew them by
heart.

The turf at his foot had been nibbled close by rabbits. His seat,
though smooth, was freckled with tiny holes, and it rounded up
out of the turf like a huge grey stone. Near at hand, ivy and
bramble had grown over it, but there showed another smaller
hummock in the turf about three or four paces away. And as he
eyed it he suddenly realised that he must be sitting on the big
knuckle end of one of Jack's Giant's larger bones, probably his
thigh bone, now partly sunken and buried and hidden in the
ground. At thought of this he sprang to his feet again, and
glanced sharply about him. Where, he wondered, lay the Giant's
skull. Then he took another long look at the vast faded
Beanstalk, and another at the bone. It was still early afternoon,
but it was winter; and at about four o'clock, he reckoned, the
sun would be set.

The more Dick looked at the Beanstalk, the more he itched to
climb it--even if he got only as high as the cottage chimney.
Farther up, much farther up, he would be able to see for miles.
And still farther, he might even, if his sight carried, catch a
glimpse of Old Bowley--a lofty hill which on days when rain was
coming he could see from his bedroom window.

And he began arguing with himself: 'Now, surely, my father would
never forgive me if he heard that I had actually discovered
Jack's Beanstalk, and had come away again without daring to climb
an inch of it!' And his other self answered him: 'Aye, that's all
very well, my friend! But an inch, if it bears you, will be as
good as a mile. What of _that_?'

What of _that_? thought Dick. He went close and tugged with all
his might at the tangle of stalks. A few hollow cockled-up bean
seeds peppered down from out of their dry shucks. He ducked his
head. Once more he tugged; the stalks were tough as leather. And
he began to climb.

But he made slow progress. The harsh withered strands of the
bean-bines not only cut into his hands but were crusted over with
rime, and his hands and feet were soon numb with cold. He stayed
breathless and panting, not venturing yet to look down. On he
went, and after perhaps a full hour's steady climbing, he stayed
again and gazed about him. And a marvellous scene now met his
eyes. His head swam with the strangeness of it.

Low in the heavens hung the red globe of the sun, and beneath him
lay the vast saucer of the world. And there, sure enough, was Old
Bowley! Jack's cottage seemingly no bigger than a doll's house
showed plumb under his feet. And an inch or so away from it stood
Jock, no bigger than a mole, cropping the grass in Jack's
mother's garden.

Having come so high, Dick could not resist climbing higher. So on
he went. Bruised with the beans that continually rattled down on
him, breathless and smoking hot though powdered white with
hoarfrost, at last he reached the top of the Beanstalk. There he
sat down to rest. He found himself in a country of low, smooth,
but very wide hills and of wide gentle valleys. Here too a thin
snow had fallen. In this clear blue light it looked much more
like the strange kind of place he had sometimes explored in his
dreams than anything he had ever seen down below. And, far, far
to the north, rising dark and lowering in the distance above the
blur and pallor of the snow, showed the turrets of a Castle. Dick
watched that Castle; and the longer he watched it, the less he
liked the look of it.

Still, where Jack had led, Dick soon decided to follow. And best
be quick! Thinking no more whether or not he would be able to get
home that night, and believing his father would forgive him for
not this time keeping to the bargain between them, since it was
certain Dick would have plenty to tell him in the morning, he set
off towards the Castle as fast as he could trudge. The frozen
snow was scarcely an inch deep, but it was numbing cold up here
in this high country; and the crystals being dry and powdery he
could not get along fast.

Indeed, Dick did not reach the great Castle's gates under their
cavernous, echoing, stone archway until a three-quarters moon had
risen bright behind him. It shone with a dazzling lustre over the
snow--on the square-headed iron nails in the gates, and on the
grim bare walls of the Castle itself. A rusty bell-chain hung
high over his head beside the gates. Dick stood there eyeing it,
his heart thumping against his ribs as it had never thumped
before. But having come so far he was ashamed to turn back. He
gave a jump, clutched at the iron handle with both hands, and
tugged with all his might.

He heard nothing, not a sound. But in a few minutes--and slow
they seemed--a wicket that had been cut out of the timbers of the
huge gate, turned on its hinges, and a leaden-faced woman, her
head and shoulders muffled up in a shawl, and, to Dick's
astonishment, only about nine feet high, looked out on him and
asked him what he wanted.

Following Jack's example, Dick told her that he had lost his
way--as indeed he had, though he had found Jack's! He said he was
tired out and hungry, and afraid of perishing in the cold. He
implored the woman to give him a drink of water and a crust of
bread, and perhaps to let him warm himself if only for a few
minutes by her fire. 'Else, ma'am,' he said, 'the only thing I
can do is to lie down under the wall here and maybe die. I can go
no further.'

Not the faintest change showed in the woman's long narrow bony
face. She merely continued to peer down at him. Then she asked
him his name. Dick told her his name, and at that her eyes
sharpened as if she had expected it.

'Step out there into the moonlight a little,' she told him, 'so
that I can see your face. So it's _Dick_, is it?' she repeated
after him. "'Dick"! And you have come begging, eh? I have heard
that tale before. And how, pray, am I to tell that you aren't
from the same place, wherever that may be, as that villainous
Jack who came here years and years and years ago with just such a
tale as you have told me, and then ran off, first with my
great-grandfather's moneybags, then with his Little Hen, and last
with his Harp? How am I to know _that_? Why!--from what I've
heard--you look to me as like as two peas!'

Dick stared up in wonder into her face. Jack's Giant, he thought,
could not have been nearly so far back as the story had made out
if this woman was only his great-granddaughter. He himself would
have guessed a round dozen of _greats_ at least. It was a
mystery.

'Jack?' he said, as if he were puzzled. 'And who was Jack, ma'am?
There are so many Jacks where I come from. Nobody of mine. What
became of him, then?'

'Ah,' said the woman, 'you may well ask that. If my
great-grandfather had caught him he would have ground his bones
to powder in his mortar, and made soup of what was left. He was
in the flower of his age, was my great-grandfather then, but he
never came back. Never. And a kinder gentler soul never walked!
"_And who was_ JACK," says he!' she muttered to herself, and
Dick little liked the sound of it.

'Well, I wonder!' said he, wishing he could hide his face from
the glare of the moon. 'I mean, I wonder if your
great-grandfather ever found his Harp again. Or his Little Hen
either. There are plenty of hens where I come from. And harps
too, as I have heard. It sounds a dreadful story, I mean; but
what could that bad boy you mention have wanted with a harp?'

'Aye,' said the leaden-faced woman, blinking once but no more as
she stared at him. 'What?'

'Anyhow,' said Dick, 'that must have been more years ago than I
could count. And if I _were_ Jack, ma'am, or even his
great-grandson either, I couldn't be the size I am now. I should
have grown a grey beard as long as your arm, and be dead and done
with long ago. I am sorry about your great-grandfather. It is a
sad story. And I don't know _what_ end that Jack mustn't have
come to. But if you would give me only a sip of water and a bit
of bread and a warm by the fire, I wouldn't ask for _anything_
more.'

'Nor did Jack, so they say,' said the woman sourly; and looked
him over, top to toe again.

But she led him in none the less through the great gates of the
Castle and down into the kitchen, where a fire was burning on the
hearth. This kitchen, Dick reckoned, was about the size of (but
not much bigger than) a little church. It was warm and cosy after
the dark and cold. A shaded lamp stood burning on the table, and
there were pewter candlesticks three feet high for fat tallow
candles on the dresser. Dick looked covertly about him, while he
stood warming his hands a few paces from the huge open hearth.
Here, beside him, was the very cupboard in which in terror Jack
had hidden himself. The shut oven door was like the door of a
dungeon. Through a stone archway to the right of him he could spy
out the copper. A chair stood beside the table. And on the table,
as if waiting for somebody, was a tub-sized soup tureen. There
was a bowl beside it, and a spoon to fit. And next the spoon was
a hunch of bread of about the size of a quartern loaf. Even
though he stood at some distance, it was only by craning his neck
that Dick could spy out what was on the table.

He looked at all this with astonished eyes. He had fancied Jack's
Giant's kitchen was a darker and gloomier place. But in Jack's
day there was perhaps a fire less fierce burning in the hearth
and no lamp alight; perhaps too in summer the shadows of the
Castle walls hung coldly over its windows. Not that he felt very
comfortable himself. Now that he had managed to get into the
Castle, he began to be anxious as to what might happen to him
before he could get out again. The ways and looks of this woman
were not at all to his fancy and whoever was going to sup at that
table might look even worse!

She had taken off her shawl now, and after rummaging in a high
green cupboard had come back with a common-sized platter and an
earthenware mug--mere dolls' china by comparison with the tureen
on the table. She filled the mug with milk.

'Now get you up on to that stool,' she said to Dick, bringing the
mug and a platter of bread over to him. 'Sit you up there and eat
and drink and warm yourself while you can. My husband will be
home at any moment. Then you can tell him who you are, what you
want, why you have come, and where from.'

Dick quaked in his shoes--not so much at the words, as at the
woman's mouth when she said them. But he looked back at her as
boldly as he dared, and climbed up on to the stool. There, clumsy
mug in one hand and crust in the other, he set to on his bread
and milk. It was pleasant enough, he thought to himself, to sit
here in the warm eating his supper, though a scrape of butter
would have helped. But what kind of dainty might not this woman's
husband fancy for _his_ when _he_ came home!

So, as he sipped, he peeped about him for a way of escape. But
except for the door that stood ajar, some great pots on the
pot-board under the dresser, and a mouse's hole in the wainscot
that was not much bigger than a fox's in a hedgerow, there was no
crack or cranny to be seen. Besides, the woman was watching him
as closely as a cat. And he decided that for the present it would
be wiser to keep his eyes to himself, and to stay harmless where
he was.

At last there came the sound of what Dick took for footsteps,
from out of the back parts of the Castle. It was as if a man were
pounding with a mallet on a tub. They came nearer. In a moment or
two the kitchen door opened, and framed in the opening stood the
woman's husband. Dick could not keep from squinting a little as
he looked at him.

He guessed him to be about eighteen to twenty feet high--not
 more. Apart from this, he was not, thought Dick, what you could
call a fine or large-sized giant. He was lean and bony; his loose
unbuttoned leather jacket hung slack from his shoulders; and his
legs in his stockings were no thicker than large scaffolding
poles. There was a long nose in his long pale face, and on either
side of his flat hat dangled dingy straw-coloured hair, hanging
down from the mop above it.

When his glance fell on Dick enjoying himself on his stool by the
kitchen fire, his watery green-grey eyes looked as if they might
drop at any moment from out of his head.

'Head and choker! what have we here, wife?' he said at last to
the leaden-faced woman. 'What have we here! _Hm_, _hm_.'

Before she could answer, Dick spoke up as boldly as he knew how,
and told the young giant (for though Dick could not be certain,
he looked to be not above thirty)--he told the young giant how he
had lost his way, and chancing on the withered Beanstalk had
climbed to the top of it to have a look round him. He told him,
too, how grieved he had been to hear that the woman's
great-grandfather had never come back to the Castle after he had
chased the boy called Jack away, and how much he wondered whether
the Little Hen was buried, and what had become of the Harp. Dick
went on talking because it was easier to do so than to keep
silent, seeing that the two of them continued to stare at him,
and in a far from friendly fashion.

'I expect it played its last tune,' he ended up, 'ages and ages
before I was born.'

'Aye,' said the woman. 'That's all pretty enough. But what _I_
say is that unless the tale I have heard is all fable, this ugly
imp here must be little short of the very spit of that wicked
thief himself. Anywise, he looks to me as if he had come from the
same place. What's more----' she turned on Dick, 'if you can tell
us where that is, you shall take my husband there and show it
him. And he can look for the grave of my great-grandfather. And
perhaps,' and her thin dark lips went arch-shaped as she said it,
'perhaps if you find it, you shall learn to play a tune on his
Harp!'

Dick, as has been said, liked neither the looks nor the sound of
this woman. She was, he decided, as sly and perhaps as
treacherous as a fox. 'I can show you where _I_ came from easily
enough,' he answered. 'But I know no more about Jack than I
have--than I have heard.'

'Nor don't we,' said the woman. 'Well, well, well! When he has
supped you shall take my husband the way you came, and we shall
see what we _shall_ see.'

Dick glanced at the giant, who all this while had been glinting
at him out of his wide and almost colourless eyes. So, not
knowing whether he followed his great-grandfather's habits, or
how long his wife would remain with them, he thought it best to
say no more. He smiled, first at one of them, and then at the
other, took a sip of milk, and rank greasy goat's milk it was,
and said, 'When you are ready, I am ready too.' The difficulty
was to keep his tongue from showing how fast his heart was
beating. At this the giant sat down to table and began the supper
his wife had prepared for him. Spoon in hand he noisily supped up
his huge basin of soup, picking out gingerly with his fingers,
and as greedily as a starling, the hot steaming lumps of meat in
it. He ate like a grampus. His soup finished, he fell to work on
what looked like a shepherd's pie that had been sizzling in the
oven. Then having sliced off a great lump of greenish cheese, he
washed it all down with what was in his mug. But whether wine,
ale, cider, or water, Jack could not tell.

Having eaten his fill, the young giant sat back in his chair, as
if to think his supper over. And soon he fell asleep. Not so did
the woman. She had seated herself on the other side of the hearth
in a great rocking-chair, a good deal closer to him than Dick
fancied, and she had begun to knit. Like the clanking of
fire-irons her needles sounded on and on in the kitchen, while
the young giant, his mouth wide open, now and again shuddered in
his slumbers or began or ceased to snore. Whereas if Dick even so
much as opened his mouth to yawn, or shifted his legs out of the
blaze of the fire, the woman's slow heavy face turned round on
him, and stared at him as if she had been made of stone.

At last, much to Dick's comfort, the young giant awoke and
stretched himself. He seemed to be in a good humour after his
nap, and not sulky or sharp as some people are. 'What _I_ say,'
he said with a laugh on seeing Dick again, 'what _I_ say is,
there's more than one kind of supper!'

'Ha, ha, ha!' echoed Dick, but not very merrily. The giant then
fumbled for a great club of blackthorn that stood behind the
kitchen door. He put on his flat hat again, wound a scarf of
sheep's wool round his neck, and said he was ready. Never had
Dick, inside a book or out, heard before of a giant that wore a
scarf. He clambered down from his stool and stood waiting. Her
hand over her mouth, and her narrow sallow face showing less
friendly than ever, the woman took another long look at him. Then
she turned to her husband, and looked him over too.

'Well, it's a cold night,' she said, 'but you will soon get warm
walking, and won't need your sheepskins.' At mention of _cold_
her husband stepped back and lifted the curtain that concealed
the kitchen window. He screened his eyes with his hands and
looked out.

'Cold!' he said. 'It's perishing. There's a moon like a lump of
silver, and a frost like iron. Besides,' he grumbled, 'a nap's no
sleep, and I don't stir a step until the morning.'

The two of them wrangled together for a while and Dick listened.
But at last after drawing iron bars across the shutters and
locking him in, leaving him nothing to make him comfortable, and
only the flames of the fire for company, they left him--as Dick
hoped, for good. But presently after, the woman came back again,
dangling a chain in her hand.

'So and _so_!' she said, snapping together the ring at the end
of it on his ankle. 'There! That kept safe my old Poll parrot for
many a year, so it may keep even _you_ safe until daybreak!'

She stooped to fix the other end of the chain round a leg of the
great table. Then, 'Take what sleep you can, young man,' she
said, 'while you can, and as best you can. You'll need all your
wits in the morning.'

Her footsteps died away. But long afterwards Dick could hear the
voices of the two of them, the giant and his wife, mumbling on
out of the depths of the night overhead, though he himself had
other things to think about. After striving in vain to free his
leg from the ring of the chain, he examined as best he could with
the help of his stool the locks and bolts of the shutters over
the windows-stout oak or solid iron every one of them. He
reckoned the walls of this kitchen must be twelve feet thick at
least and the bolts were to match.

And while more and more anxiously he was still in search of a way
out, he heard a sudden scuffling behind him, and a squeak as
shrill as a bugle. He turned in a flash, and in the glow of the
fire saw what he took to be a mouse that had come out of its
hole, though it was an animal of queer shape, lean and dark, and
half as large again as a full-sized English rat. Next moment, a
score or more of these creatures had crept out of the wainscot.
They gambolled about on the kitchen floor, disporting themselves
and looking for supper.

By good fortune, when the squeak sounded, Dick had been standing
on his stool by the window. He held his breath at sight of them,
and perhaps had held it too long, or the giant's pepper had got
into his nose, for he suddenly sneezed. At which a jubilee indeed
went up in the kitchen. And if, in spite of his chain, by a
prodigious leap from the stool to the table he had not managed to
land on it safely, it might well have been the last of him.
Luckily too, the margins of the table jutted out far beyond its
legs, so that though the sharp-nosed hungry animals scrabbled up
the legs in hopes to get him, they could climb no further.

Now and again, squatting there, through the long hours that
followed--half-hidden between the giant's tureen and mug--Dick
drowsed off, in spite of these greedy noisy rodents, and in spite
too of the crickets in the outer cracks of the oven, which kept
up a continuous din like a covey of willow-wrens. He was pestered
also by the cunning and curiosity of a wakeful housefly, though
others like it, straddling as big as cockroaches on the walls in
the dusky light of the fire, remained asleep. It must be a fusty
airless place, Dick thought, that had flies in winter. And so he
passed a sorry night.

It was five by the clock when the giant and his wife came down
again, Grackel still grumbling, and she pressing him to be gone.
At last he was ready. She looked him up and down. 'What's to be
done is best done quickly,' she said to him. 'You can get
breakfast at a tavern maybe. And leave your aunt's watch behind
you, husband. It will be safer at home.'

The giant sullenly did as his wife had bidden, drew out of his
pocket a fine gold watch, its back embedded with what looked to
Dick like sapphires and emeralds and other precious stones, and
laid it on the table.

'That looks a fine watch,' said Dick, shivering in his breeches,
for he was stiff and cold.

'Aye, so it is,' said the woman, and she put it away on a shelf
in the cupboard. 'Now look you here, Grackel,' she added, when
they had all three come together to the gates of the Castle, 'if
you are not home before sundown the day after to-morrow, I shall
send for your uncles, and they shall come and look for you.'

Dick raised his hat to the woman as he left her there by the
Castle gates, but there was so much mistrust of him in her eye
that he feigned he had done so only in order to scratch his head,
and he couldn't manage even to say the Good-day that was in his
mouth.

So he and the giant went off together into the snow, shining
white in the light of the moon. The moon was still far from her
setting. But they had not gone much above a mile--one of Dick's
miles--before the giant began to be impatient at the slow pace he
had to move in order that Dick might keep up with him, even
though for every stride _he_ took Dick trotted three. So at last
he stooped down in the snow and told Dick to climb up over his
back on to his shoulders. Up went Dick like a cat up a tree,
clutched on to his coarse yellow hair, and away they went.

Perched up on high like this, a good twenty feet above the snow,
and tossing along on Grackel's shoulders, the giant's great bony
hand clutched round his knees, Dick thought he had never seen a
more magical sight than these strange hills and valleys sparkling
cold and still in the glare of the moonlight. No, not even in his
dreams. He might have been an Arab on the hump of his camel in
the desert of Gobi.

It was easy for the giant to find his way. For though there were
many prints of wild creatures and of long-clawed birds in the
snow, Dick's footmarks were clearer than any. Now and then they
passed a great clump of trees--their bare twigs brushing the
starry sky--which looked like enormous faggots of kindling wood.
And in less than a quarter of the time that Dick had spent on his
journey to the Castle, they came to the top of the Beanstalk. And
Dick shouted in the giant's ear that he wanted to be put down.

'Here we are,' he shouted, when he was on his own feet again. The
giant in the last few minutes had been ambling on very warily as
if he knew he was on dangerous ground. As soon as Dick had
stamped life into his legs again, he pointed to the huge tangle
of frosty bine and withy that jutted high above the edge of the
abyss. 'See there!' he shouted at the top of his voice, in the
sharp frosty air. 'That's the Beanstalk. Down _there_ is where I
come from. But I doubt if it will bear _you_.'

He almost laughed out loud to see with what caution Grackel crept
out on hands and knees to peer out over the brink at the world
below. But the giant could see nothing in the sombre shadow of
the moon except the dried-up Beanstalk twisting and writhing down
below him into space. 'Hm, hm,' he kept stupidly muttering.

And Dick understood at last how it was that the Beanstalk had
never been discovered before. These giants, it seemed, were by
nature a stupid race. So scared was Grackel at last at sight of
the abyss that his teeth began to chatter like millstones, and
his face was as white as a sheet. Dick rejoiced. It seemed he
would never dare even to set foot on the Beanstalk.

Grackel peered round at him. 'So this,' he said, 'is where my
great-grandad climbed down when he was chasing after that thief
and vagabond Jack! I can't see to the bottom of it!'

Dick shook his head. 'No, nor, I suppose, could he! Though why
you should be so fond of your _wife's_ grandad I can't think!'

'Aye,' said the giant leering at him, 'and supposing she and I
are first cousins and he was grandad to both, what then?'

'Well,' said Dick, 'I know nothing of that. But Jack or no Jack,
this is not only the only way down I know, but it's the way I
climbed _up_. Once, I suppose, it must have been green and fresh
and full of sap. Now it's all dried-up and withered away. And
every yard I climbed I supposed it would come tumbling down over
my head.'

'Aye,' said the giant. 'But what did you want to come _for_?'

'Oh, just to see,' said Dick, as airily as he could. The giant
with a sigh rose to his feet.

'Well,' he said, 'I'm not so weighty as was my great-grandad, not
at least according to his portrait in the gallery. And if he
managed to climb down in safety when this ladder was young and
green, what is there to prevent my doing the same, now that it is
old and tough and dry?'

With that, he thrust his long lean arm over the edge and,
clutching the tangle of withered shoots, violently shook the
Beanstalk. It trembled like a spider's web in all its fibres, and
Dick could hear the parched seeds clattering down from out of
their pods towards the earth below.

'Well,' said he, looking up at the giant in the moonlight, 'what
may be, may be. My only fear is that once down there, you may
find it impossible to get back again. Or supposing it breaks in
the middle?'

Grackel stared into his face, and then at the snow. 'He's
thinking of the Little Hen,' thought Dick to himself, 'and the
Harp.'

'Yes, it would be a dreadful thing,' Dick repeated, 'if it broke
in the middle.'

'Aye,' leered the giant, 'and so it would! But what about my
great-grandad? It didn't break in the middle with him.' Dick made
no answer to this. He held his peace.

'We'll have no more words about it,' said the giant. 'I'm never
so stupid as when folks talk at me. You shall go first, being no
more than an atomy, and I will follow after. I'll wait no
longer.'

And with that, he flung his cudgel over the edge and began to
pull up his wristbands. Dick listened in vain to hear the crash
of the cudgel on the earth below. He feared for poor Jock.

There was no help in waiting. So Dick began to climb down the
Beanstalk, and the giant followed after him so close with his
lank scissor-legs that Dick had to keep dodging his head to avoid
his great shoes, with their shining metal hooks instead of laces.
Beanseeds came scampering down over Dick's head and shoulders
like hailstones. It was lucky for him they were hollow and dry.

'Now,' said Dick at last, when they reached the bottom and he had
seen the cudgel sticking up out of the ground beyond the broken
wall. 'Here we are. This is where I come from. This is England.
And you will want to be off at once to look for your
great-grandfather's grave. Now that way is the way you should go.
I go this. My father is expecting me and I must get home as soon
as I can.'

It was so he hoped to slip away. But Grackel was at least too
crafty for that. He stood leaning his sharp elbows on the broken
roof of the cottage, leering down at Dick so steadily that he was
mortally afraid the giant might notice the bulge of his
great-grandad's leg-bone in the rabbit-nibbled turf of the
garden.

'No, no, my young master,' said he at last. 'Fair and easy! Good
friends keep together. You have had bite and sup in my house, now
you shall give me bite and sup in yours. And it may be your
father has heard of that Jack. The cackling of my great-grandad's
Hen, let alone the strumming of his Harp, must have reached a
long way among stubby hills in a little country like this!
England!'

The rose and grey of daybreak was stirring in the eastern sky.
Dick, though angry, reasoned with the giant as best he could, but
the great oaf could not be dissuaded from keeping him company. It
was bitter cold in this early morning, and Dick longed to let his
father know that nothing was amiss with him.

'Well,' he said at last, 'I have told you nine times over that no
travellers come this way. It is over there the big cities are.'
And he pointed west. 'But if come you must, why come! And I can
only hope my father will be pleased to see you.'

He put two fingers into his mouth and whistled. There came an
answering whinny. And from a lean-to or out-house behind the
cottage where it had found shelter during the night and a bite or
two of old hay to munch, Jock answered his summons. This time
Grackel had no reason to complain of Dick's lagging behind. Jock
cantered away up the valley with his young master on his back,
and the giant like a gallows strode on beside them.

When they came at length to a drift of woodland near the farm,
Dick dismounted; and, having pointed out the chimneys of the
farmhouse in the hollow below, he told the giant to hide himself
among the trees, while he went to prepare his father for the
guest he had brought home with him. So Grackel edged down as best
he could among the trees, and Dick, leading Jock by his bridle,
went on to the house.

In spite of the cold, the back door was ajar, and on an old
horsehair sofa beside the burnt-out fire Dick found his father
fast asleep, the stable lantern with which he had been out in the
night looking for his son still burning beside him. Dick called
him softly and touched his hand. His father stirred, muttering in
his dreams; then his eyes opened. And at sight of Dick a light
came into them as if he had found an unspeakable treasure.

Safely come home again, Dick was soon forgiven for being so long
away. As quickly as he could he told his father his adventures.
But when the farmer heard that the giant was actually in hiding
not more than a quarter of a mile away from the house, and greedy
for bed and board, he opened his eyes a good deal wider.

'Is that so?' he said at last. 'Twenty-foot in his shoes and all!
Lorramussy! Well, well! And his great-grandad and all! That don't
seem so _very_ far back, now do it? Still, if there he is, my
son, why, there he _is_; and we must do the best we can. And I
don't see myself,' he added, glancing at Dick's troubled face,
'being what and where you were, you could have done much else.
But who'd have guessed it, now? Who _would_? That Bean-stalk!'

'The worst of all, father,' said Dick, 'is that woman up there.
She'd freeze your blood even to look at her. What _she_ wants is
the Little Hen. And if _she_ came down...!'

'Fox or vixen, one thing at a time, my son,' said the farmer.
'Your friend out in the cold, if we keep him waiting, may get
restless. So we'll be off at once to see what we can do to keep
him quiet. The other must come after.'

The shining of the wintry sun lay all over the frosty fields when
they went back together to the giant. And sour and fretful they
found him. He only scowled at the farmer's polite Good-morning,
grumbled that he was famished and wanted breakfast. 'And plenty
of it!' he muttered, leering at Dick.

The farmer eyed him up and down for the twentieth time, and
wished more than ever that Dick could have persuaded him to stay
in his own country. He liked neither his pasty peevish face nor
his manners. And his blood boiled to think of Dick tied up like a
monkey to the leg of a table. Still, it had always been the
farmer's rule in life to make the best of a bad job. With worry,
what's wrong waxes worse, he would say. So he decided then and
there to lodge the giant for the time being in his great barn;
and to keep him in a good temper with plenty of victuals. The
sooner they could pack him off the better. But they must be
cautious.

So Dick and his father led the giant off to the barn, the
sheep-dogs following behind them. They threw open the wide double
doors, and stooping low, Grackel went in and stretched his long
shins in the hay at the other end of it. After which they shut-to
the doors again and hastened off to the farm to fetch him
breakfast.

By good chance there was not only a side of green bacon but a
cold roast leg of mutton in the larder that had been prepared for
dinner the day before, though then the farmer had no stomach for
it. With this, a tub of porridge, half a dozen loaves of bread, a
basketful of boiled hens' eggs and a couple of buckets of tea,
they went back to the barn. Two or three journeys the giant gave
them before he licked the last taste out of his last broken
honey-pot, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and said he
had had enough. Indeed, he had gorged himself silly.

'My son tells me', bawled the farmer, 'that you have had a broken
night. _His_ friends are _my_ friends. Maybe you'd enjoy a nap
in the hay now. Make yourself easy; we'll be back anon.'

They closed behind them the great doors of the barn again, and
went off themselves to breakfast, staying their talk and munching
every now and again to listen to what sounded like distant
thunder, but which, Dick explained to his father, was only the
giant's snoring.

For the next day or two their guest was good-humoured and
easy-going enough but, like some conceited people far less than
half his size, he was by nature both crafty and stupid. And since
he had now found himself in lodgings where he had nothing to do,
no wife to make him mind and keep him busy, and he could eat and
guzzle and sleep and idle the whole day long, he had little wish
to be off in search of his great-grandfather, and none to go home
again.

He knew well, the cunning creature, that even if his wife sent
out his uncles in search of him and they discovered the
Beanstalk, neither of them would venture to set foot on it. It
would be certain death! For these were ordinary-sized giants,
while he himself was laughed at in his own country for a weakling
and nicknamed Pygmy Grackel. But this Dick did not know till
afterwards.

When evening came, and the farm hands had gone home from their
work, Grackel would take a walk in the fields, though Dick's
father, after once accompanying him, did not do so again. He had
kept the great bumpkin out of the meadows and the turnips because
it was lambing season. But it enraged him to see Grackel's
clod-hopper footprints in his winter wheat, and the ricks in his
stackyard ruined by Grackel's leaning upon them to rest. And it
enraged him even more when the giant crept up to the farmhouse
one midnight to stare in at him as he lay in his bed, and kicked
over the water-butt on his way. The great lubber grew more and
more mischievous.

In less than a week both Dick and his father were at their wits'
end to know what to do with their guest. The good woman who
cooked for them had to toil continually the best part of the day
to prepare his food. A couple of ducks and three or four fat hens
he accounted no more than a snack; he would gollop up half a
roasted sheep for supper and ask for more. Indeed his appetite
was far beyond his size, and he seemed to think of nothing but
his belly.

Apart from this too, and the good home-brewed ale and cider they
had to waste on him, he lay on their minds like a thunder cloud.
And when he had eaten and guzzled to gluttony, as like as not he
would grow sulky and malicious. He could do more damage in five
minutes than an angry bull in half an hour. And when in a bad
humour he would do it on purpose. Besides, tongues soon began to
get busy about him in the villages round about. The shepherd
complained that his lambs began to be missing; the ploughman's
wife that her two small children had not been out of doors for a
week. It was reported that the farmer had caught a cruel and
ravenous ogre in his fields, and had chained him up in his barn.
Some said it was not an ogre but a monster that trumpeted like an
elephant and had claws like a bird.

Though the great doors of the barn were usually kept shut on the
giant all day until dusk, and the farmer had stuffed up every
hole he could find in its roof and timbers--and Grackel was as
sensitive as any female to draughts--the roar of his snoring
could be heard a full mile away, and when he laughed--which
luckily was seldom--it was like a house falling down. At least so
it seemed, though perhaps Dick made worse of it than was the
truth. He had not yet seen Grackel's uncles.

There was at any rate no hope of keeping the giant secret. For
some reason too there was always a host of birds--rooks, daws,
starlings and the like, hovering about the barn. The horses and
cattle, and even the pigs, were never at peace while the giant
was near; but pawing and lowing and neighing and wuffing the
whole day long. And well any pig _might_ wuff, since Grackel
could devour him at a meal.

The result of all this was that the farmer would now often find
strangers lurking in his fields. They had come in hope to get a
glimpse of the giant. And whether they succeeded or not, talk of
his size, his appetite, his strength and his fury spread far and
wide. Worse even than this: two small urchins from a neighbouring
village had managed by hiding themselves in a ditch until it was
evening to creep up close to the barn and, peeping through a hole
in the wood where a knot had fallen out, found themselves peering
into the great staring still watery eye of the giant fixed on
them as he lay in the hay on the other side. Cold as stone with
terror, they had rushed away home to their mothers, been seized
with fits, and one of them had nearly died.

Dick could hardly get a wink of sleep for thinking of the giant
and how to be rid of him. To see the trouble and care in his
father's kindly face filled him with remorse. He searched his
story-books again and again but could find no help in them. Nor
could he discover any advice, not a single word, about giants in
_The Farmer's Friend_ or _The Countryman's Companion_--books
which belonged to his father.

On the next Sunday afternoon his father walked off to the
vicarage, six miles away by the field paths, to ask the advice of
the old parson. He was the most learned man the farmer knew. But
though the old gentleman listened to him very attentively, and
was sorry for the trouble he was in, his chief fear was that the
giant might find his way to the church. Once in, how without
damage could he be coaxed out again?

There were giants in days of old, he told the farmer, who lived
for centuries; and at a hundred or more were as hale and lusty as
an ordinary man of less than forty. One such in Carmarthenshire
had stolen all the millstones for thirty miles around and amused
himself by flinging them into the sea. There had been a dearth of
meal for months. Giants can be as cunning as a fox, the parson
told the farmer, and as surly as a bear, and are great gluttons.
But this the farmer knew already.

At last, one night, a little less than a fortnight after he had
climbed the Beanstalk, having fallen asleep after hours of vain
thinking, Dick suddenly woke up with so bright a notion in his
head that it might have been whispered to him straight out of a
dream.

There could be no waiting for the morning. He went off at once to
his father's bedroom, woke him up, and, having made sure the
giant was not listening at the window, shared it with him then
and there. And the farmer thought almost as well of the notion as
Dick did himself. They sat together there, Dick hooded up in a
blanket at the foot of his father's bed, and for a full hour
talked Dick's plan over. To and fro and up and down they
discussed it, and could think of nothing better.

So as soon as light had begun to show next morning, Dick mounted
his pony, and keeping him awhile on thick grass to muffle his
hoofs, he galloped off by the way he had gone before.

This time he had brought with him an old pair of leathern pruning
gloves and climbing irons, and he reached the top of the
Beanstalk before noon. He arrived at the Castle gates while it
was still full daylight. Till this moment all had gone well with
him, though he had hated leaving his father alone to all the
troubles of the day.

But now, as Dick was on the point of leaping up to clutch the
rusty bell-chain, a distant bombilation fell on his ear--such a
rumbling and bumbling as is made by huge puncheons of rum being
rolled about over the hollow stones of a cellar. He had not
listened long before he guessed this must be the voices of
Grackel's uncles colloguing together. At sound of them he shook
in his shoes. What was worse, they seemed to be in an ill humour.
But whether it was anger or mere argument in their voices, there
was nothing in the music of them that boded much good for Dick!

At last they ceased, and Dick (who was by now bitterly cold, for
an icy wind was whiffling round the Castle walls) decided to give
a tug at the bell only just strong enough for a single ding. He
then hid himself behind a buttress of the wall. The woman
presently looked out of the wicket in the great gates. And Dick,
peeping, and seeing that she was alone, showed himself and came
nearer.

'Aha,' she called at sight of him, 'so you have come back! Aye,
and a fortnight late! And where, my fine young man, is my
husband? Answer me that! _Grackel!_' she wailed aloud, as if
beside herself, 'Where are you? Where _are_ you, Grackel?

'Not here, eh!' she went on, watching Dick out of her black eyes
as closely as a cat a bird. 'So you have come back to...'--and
with that she pounced on him. She gripped him by the slack of his
coat, and stooped low over his face. 'Eh, eh, eh! So now I have
you, my fine young man!' Her teeth chattered as she spoke. 'Step
you in, and you shall see what you _shall_ see!'

Dick had scarcely breath left to speak with. He thought his end
was come at last. And then, suddenly, the woman drew back, let go
of him, turned her head away and began to cry.

Then Dick knew that what had seemed only anger was chiefly grief,
that she supposed her husband must be dead and would never come
back to her. And he rejoiced. His plan was turning out even
better than he had hoped for. As best he could he tried to
comfort the poor woman. He took the long hand that hung down
beside her, and assured her that her husband was in the best of
health, better far than when he had started, and in such ease and
comfort at his father's farm that nothing would persuade him to
go on his travels in search of the Little Hen and the Harp, or
induce him to come home again. 'It's no use your crying,' he
said. 'That won't bring him back!'

At last the woman dried her eyes and began to listen to him. She
took him into a little room this side of the kitchen, hung with
smoked carcases of beasts for the table, a room, which, though
cold, was secret.

'I kept on telling your husband,' Dick said, 'that he need but
send you word that he is well, that he is comfortable. I thought
of you, ma'am, and kept on. For though I haven't a wife myself, I
know they want news of their husbands. So would my mother of my
father, if she had not died when I was four. And perhaps she does
even now. But your husband has grown fatter and won't stir out of
the house even to take a little exercise. He eats and eats, and
at mention of _home_ only flies into a rage.

'"But," I said to him, "your wife will be weeping for you to
come!" And all he answered was to bawl for another bucket of
cider. So I came along by myself and am nearly dead-beat and
starved with the cold.'

All this Dick said, and, it being chiefly lies, he said it much
too boldly. But the woman was overjoyed at his news and believed
him. Her one thought now was to get her husband home again, and
to keep her wrath against him till then.

She told Dick she would go at once and wake her husband's uncles.
'They are taking a nap,' she said. Then he himself could go along
with them, and they would soon persuade her husband to come home.
'And if he won't, they'll make him,' she said.

But this plan was by no means to Dick's liking. He asked the
woman how long the giants would be sleeping and in what room they
lay. 'I am too tired to talk to them just now,' he said, 'frozen.
I couldn't bear the din they make. Leave them at peace awhile and
take me into the kitchen, ma'am, else I shall soon perish of
cold. Give me some food and a mug of milk, and I'll tell you a
better plan--a far better plan--than that. But quietly!'

Now by good fortune the giants were napping in a room at the
other end of the Castle where they were accustomed to play
cards--_Dumps_, _Frogbite_, and other old games. And Dick sat
up once more on his stool by the kitchen fire, and after
refreshing himself, he explained to the woman his plan.

'What I want to say, ma'am, is this,' he said. And he told her
that the people of his country were utterly weary of having her
idle husband loafing about in their villages and doing nothing
for his keep. 'Down there, we are all little like me,' he said,
'and though my father--who wouldn't hurt a fly--has done his
utmost to put your husband at his ease, to feed him and keep him
happy, it is all wasted. He has no more thanks in him than a
flea.

'He wanders about, scares the women, frightens the children,
steals from the shops, and shouts and sings at dead of night when
all honest folk are asleep in their beds. And now the King's
soldiers are coming, and as soon as they catch him, ma'am, they
will drag him off to some great dismal underground dungeon, and
he will never see daylight again. For little though we may be,
there's a cage in my country that would hold nine or more giants
together, and every one of them twice as big as your husband, and
every one of them loaded groaning up with chains. You see, ma'am,
we don't mean them any harm, but can't keep them safe else. So I
came to tell you.' He took another slow sip of his greasy
buttermilk, and glanced back into the fire.

'Then again,' he went on, 'if these two uncles of your husband's,
who you say are big heavy men, ventured to go my way home, and
that must be ten thousand feet from top to bottom, they would
only come to grief. They would topple down and break every bone
in their bodies. And even if they did climb safely down and came
into my country, what good would that be to them? I agree, ma'am,
that in mere size and shape they are much larger than we are
where I come from. But for wits and quickness and cunning--why,
they are no better than rabbits!

'Just think, ma'am, though I have no wish to hurt your feelings,
with your husband gone and all, how a mere boy of my size and not
much older, came sneaking again and again into this huge Castle
of yours, and ran off with your great-grandad's treasures three
times over without losing a hair of his head. I agree it was not
fair dealings, between equals, as you might say. I agree that
that Jack borrowed the Harp without leave. But boy to giant,
ma'am, you can't but agree he had his wits about him and was no
coward.

'Besides, down there we have great cannon and what is called
gunpowder, which would blow fifty giants to pieces before they
could sneeze. I mean,' cried Dick, 'there would be a noise like
that,' and he clapped his hands together, 'and the next minute
there wouldn't be a scrap of your husband's uncles to be seen.
Except perhaps for a button here and there for a keepsake ten
miles off. You must give me something to prove I have seen you.'

Dick spoke with such a zest and earnestness that this poor woman
began once more to be afraid that she would never see her husband
again, alive or dead, for she dearly loved him even though he had
given her his word of honour and not kept it. She would talk to
him about that, all in good time.

'Now see here,' said Dick at last, 'your husband has been
gobbling and guzzling so much that he is almost too stupid now to
understand good sense when he hears it. It's true I could make a
fortune out of him by leading him round from town to town and
charging a piece of silver for every peep at him. But I haven't a
heart as hard as that, ma'am; and if you want your husband back,
there is only one thing to do.'

So after they had talked the matter over a little longer the
woman fetched out from her bosom on a ribbon a locket in which
was a twine of her husband's hair when he was a little boy. The
hair though very coarse was almost as pale as gold. And in the
back of the locket was a glass in which, said the woman, you
could see your dearest friend. But she herself did not much
believe in it, because when she looked into it she could see only
herself.

So Dick peeped in, and there he saw what looked very much like
his father. His cheeks grew red and he smiled into the locket;
and his father seemed to give him a look back. 'And what,' Dick
said to the woman, turning the locket over, 'what is this milky
side for?'

'Oh, in that,' said the woman, 'you can see what you are dreaming
about. But it's nothing but black dreams come to me.'

Dick looked; and sure enough, the milkiness cleared away in a
moment, and he saw a tiny image there of Jack's Beanstalk, but
fresh and green. He slipped the bauble into his jacket pocket and
told the woman that it would do very well for a proof to her
husband that he himself had seen and talked with her. 'For you
see,' he said, 'if I had nothing to show him, he might not
believe me.'

And the message the woman sent Grackel was that she had heard
with joy he was happy in the place he had come to, that he must
remember to behave himself, and that his uncles would not come
out in search of him so long as she knew he was safe. All she
desired was to have but one more glimpse of him, and that he
should come back if but for one night, because a feast was
preparing, the feast they had every year on his long-lost
great-grandfather's birthday.

'He'll remember that,' the woman said to Dick. 'And tell him that
his uncles and his nephew and his cousins and his neighbours and
his friends from afar off will all be at the feast, and will
never forgive him if he is absent. Tell him I haven't missed him
so much as I thought I should. Tell him I cried a little when I
thought he was dead, and laughed when I knew he was safe. If he
thinks I don't much want him back, back he will come. If he
settles for good in your country, I am a lost woman.'

'Ah,' said Dick, 'leave that to me. But what am I to have for my
trouble?'

The woman offered him a bag of money. There it was in the
cupboard.

'Too heavy,' said Dick.

She brought out her family's Seven-League boots.

Dick laughed. He could almost have gone to bed in one of them.
She showed him her husband's drinking cup.

Dick laughed again. He said it was too big for a wash-basin and
not big enough for a bath. 'Besides,' he said, 'it's only
silver.'

At last the woman, as Dick hoped she would, remembered her
husband's watch--the watch that had belonged to one of his aunts.
This of course was but a little watch compared with the giant's
father's watch, which was safe upstairs. Dick's mouth watered as
he took hold of the chain and lifted the watch out of the woman's
hand. What he had supposed were sapphires and emeralds were not
common stones like these at all. There was a toadstone, a
thunderstone, an Arabian crystal and a blagroon--though Dick
didn't then know the names of them.

'But I had hoped,' he said, eyeing it and pretending to be
disappointed, 'that it was not a mere pocket watch, but a watch
with a little magic in it. I think perhaps, after all, I should
get more money by taking your husband round to show him off at
some of our country fairs. You see, as I keep on saying, he
doesn't want to come back.'

But the woman showed him with her finger that if he pressed a
secret spring at the edge of the watch near the guard-ring he
could make time seem to go much slower--whenever, that is, he was
truly happy; and that if he pressed the secret spring on the left
he could make time seem to go much quicker--say, when he was
feeling miserable, or was tired or waiting for anything or
anybody. And not only this; there was a third spring. 'If you
press that,' the woman said, 'you can't tell what will happen
next.'

Dick was mightily pleased with the watch, and just to test it,
pressed the left-hand spring. And it seemed not a moment had
passed by when there came a prodigious stamping and thumping and
clattering from out of the back parts of the Castle, and he knew
that Grackel's two uncles had woken up. So loud was the din they
were making that it sounded as if a volcano had broken out, and
it scared Dick more than he liked to show. So--though he
pretended to be in no hurry--he let the spring go, fixed the
chain round his waist, and slipped the watch in under the front
of his breeches.

'If your husband isn't with you again by sundown to-morrow
evening,' he told the woman, 'then send his uncles after me. The
Beanstalk, of course, _might_ bear them; and even though they
might never come back again, they would at least have a chance to
make an end of _me_.'

'If you come along with me now,' said the woman, 'you shall have
a peep at them, and they won't see you. But quietly! They have
ears like the east wind!'

So, treading mimsey as a cat, Dick followed after the woman, and
she led him up a flight of stairs so steep he might have been
climbing a pyramid, and took him into a gallery overlooking the
room in which the giants sat. Dick crept forward, and, leaning
out a little between the bases of the balusters of the gallery,
peeped down. They were intent on a game that looked like common
dominoes, though the pieces or men they played with were almost
as big as tombstones. In no story-book he had ever read had Dick
chanced on the like of these giants. They sat like human
mountains at their game, and the noise of the dominoes was like
Pharaoh's chariots. And when one of them, laying down a domino on
the table, mumbled, _Double!_, it was like the coughing of a
lion. Dick didn't need to watch them long. But as soon as he was
out of earshot of them again, he burst out laughing, though it
was only feigned.

'It's a good thing,' he said to the woman, 'I thought of what I
told you. They are fine men, your husband's uncles, and no
beanstalk I have ever seen would bear even half the weight of
either. I'll keep the locket safe, you can trust me, ma'am, and
if my father will let me, perhaps I might come back with your
husband to the feast.'

The woman was by nature mean and close, but seeing how little by
comparison Dick would be likely to eat and drink, she said he
would be welcome. So he bade her goodbye and off he went.




It was pitch-black night when he got home again, but his father
was waiting up for him. They were so anxious for the giant to be
gone that they couldn't stay till morning. They went off together
with a lantern to the barn, and having gone in, shouted at the
top of their voices in Grackel's ear. They managed to wake him at
last, and gave him his wife's message. He was so stupid after his
first sleep, and he had eaten so vast a supper, that they might
as well have been conversing with a mule. Even when he understood
what they were saying, he sat blinking, morose and sullen at
being disturbed.

'And how can I tell', said he, 'that what you say is true? A fine
story, a pretty story, but I don't believe a word of it.'

But when Dick told him of the feast that was being prepared, that
all his wife wanted was to see him once again, that else his
uncles might come to look for him; and when at last he showed the
giant his wife's locket--then Grackel believed what was said to
him (though Dick kept the watch to himself). And the very next
morning the two of them set out together for the Beanstalk. And
the farmer, eyes shining and all smiles, saw them off.

It was a morning fine and bright. A little hard snow had fallen
in the small hours and lay on the grass like lumps of sago. The
ponds were frozen hard as crystal. And as he cantered along on
his pony--the giant's lank legs keeping pace with him on his
right side like the arms of a windmill--Dick was so happy at the
thought of at last getting rid of his guest that he whistled away
like a starling as he rode.

And Grackel said, 'Why are you whistling?'

"'Why?"' said Dick. 'Why, to think what a happy evening you are
going to have, and how pleased your wife will be to see you, and
what a feast they are making for you up there. I could almost
smell the oxen roasting for the cold meats on the side table; and
there must have been seven score of fat pigs being driven in for
the black puddings.'

This only made Grackel the more eager to press on.

'And now,' said Dick, when in the height of the morning they came
to the foot of the Beanstalk, which was masked thick with
hoarfrost smouldering in the sun, 'here we part for a while. When
you are come up to the top, give a loud _hullabaloo_, and I
shall know you are safe. Then I shall ride off home again, and I
will come to meet you here the day after to-morrow, about two.'

Now, though it was a great folly, Dick had not been able to
resist bringing Grackel's watch with him. He had hooked the chain
round his waist under his breeches, and the watch bulged out like
a hump in the wrong place. By good luck the giant was on the
further side away from the watch, so that he had not noticed this
hump. But now that they were at a standstill, and all was quiet,
he detected the ticking.

And he said, 'What is that sound I hear?'

And Dick said, 'That is my heart beating.'

'Why is it beating so loud?' said Grackel.

'Ah,' said Dick, in a doleful tone, 'it must be for sadness that
you are going away, even if only for a little while! We have had
our little disagreements together, you and me, about the sheep
and the snoring and the cider. But now we are friends, and that
is all over. Isn't there any little keepsake you could give me by
which to remember you till you come back?'

At this the giant drew in his lips, and none too eagerly felt in
his pockets. He brought out at last from beneath the leather flap
of _his_ side pocket a discoloured stub of candle in a box.

'It's not much to look at,' he grumbled, 'but once it's lit it
will never go out till you say, _Out, candle, out!_ even if it's
left burning in a hurricane for a hundred years.' Dick kept this
candle until the day he met his sweetheart and lit it then. It
may be lighting his great-grandchildren to sleep this very
evening. But that came afterwards.

'There,' said Grackel, 'take great care of it, and you shall give
it me back when we meet again. Aye, and then I am sure to be
hungry. So have plenty of hot supper waiting for me in my
house--legs of pork soused in apples, and kids in batter, and
drink to wash it down! And get in for me too some more hay and
blankets and horse-cloths. I could scarcely sleep a wink last
night for the cold.'

Dick nodded and laughed, and the giant began to climb the
Beanstalk. Dick watched him till first he was as small to look up
at as an ordinary man, and next no bigger than a dwarf, and not
long after that he was out of sight. About an hour or so
afterwards, for Grackel being lean and sinewy was a nimble
climber, Dick heard a rumbling in the higher skies. He knew that
it was the giant's hullabalooing, and that he was safe. Then as
quick as lightning he set about gathering together a great heap
of the last year's bracken and dead wood and dry grass, and piled
it round the parched-up roots of the Beanstalk. Then he felt in
his pocket for his flint and tinder-box that his father had laid
out for him overnight. He felt--and felt again; and his beating
heart gave one dull thump and almost stood still. In the heat and
haste of getting away he had left them both on the kitchen table!

Dick hauled out Grackel's watch to see the time. It was seven
minutes to twelve. It would now be impossible for him to get home
before nightfall and back again much before morning. It was a
long journey, and the way would be difficult to follow in the
dark. And how was lie to be certain that the giant, having come
to the Castle and found that his watch was gone, would not climb
down the Beanstalk again to fetch it? Dick pressed the right-hand
spring of the watch, for though he was in great trouble of mind,
he wanted to think hard and to make the time go slowly. And as,
brooding on there under the Beanstalk, he stared at the second
hand, though it was not much bigger than a darning needle, it was
jerking so sluggishly that he could have counted twenty between
every beat. The sun, that was now come to the top of his winter
arch in the sky, and was glistening like a tiny furnace on the
crystal of the watch, danced in his eyes so fiercely that at last
he could scarcely see.

'Why,' thought Dick suddenly, 'the glass magnifies. It's a
_burning_-glass!'

Instantly, after but one sharp upward glance towards the top of
the Beanstalk, he took out his pocket-knife and heaved up the
watch lid. The glass was as thick as half the nail-width of his
little finger. He held it close down over the dried-up leaves and
bracken in the full beams of the noonday sun. And in a few
moments, to his great joy, a faint twirling wreath of grey smoke
appeared on the buff of the bracken frond. Then there came a
black pin-prick circle that rapidly began to ring out larger.
Then a little red appeared at the edge of the circle. And at this
Dick began to puff very very softly, still tilting the glass into
the direct rays of the sun. The frond began to smoulder, and the
smoulder began to spread, and now Dick blew with all his might.

Presently a thin reek of vapour appeared, and the bracken broke
into flames. And when once these parched-up leaves and grasses
had fairly taken fire, the Beanstalk itself was soon ablaze. The
flames--and theirs was a strange music--roared loud in the wintry
air--red, greenish, copper and gold--licking and leaping their
way from strand to strand up and up, while a huge pale-umber
tower of smoke rose billowing into the blue air of the morning.

Dick gazed at the flames in delight and terror. Never in all his
born days had he seen such a bonfire. Even Jock, who had been
quietly browsing by the ruinous cottage walls, turned his dark
eyes at sight of this fiery spectacle, lifted his head and
whinnied. Indeed, the flaming Beanstalk must have been visible to
all Gloucestershire's seven neighbour counties round. And the
fire burned up and up, and the pods and red-hot bean-seeds came
hailing down, with wisps of fire and smoke. And the roaring
gradually grew more and more distant, until at last the blaze up
above was dwindled to little more than a red spark, like a tiny
second sun, far far up in the vacancy of the heavens. And then it
vanished and was gone.

And Dick with a deep sigh, partly of regret and partly of relief,
knew that Jack's old Beanstalk was gone for ever. At least this
might be so, though he had been wise enough before he had begun
gathering together the fuel for his fire to put two or three of
the dry bean-seeds into his pocket. Some day he meant to plant
them; just to see.

He broke the ice over a little spring that was frozen near the
cottage, took a sip or two of the biting cold water underneath,
and dabbled his hot cheeks and eyelids. Then he whistled for
Jock, and jumped into the saddle. Yet again he dragged out
Grackel's watch, pressed down the left spring, and with one last
glance up over his shoulder, set off for home. And pleased beyond
all words was his father the farmer to see him.


[End of _Dick and the Beanstalk_ by Walter de la Mare]