accommodation of his slippers, and so accustomed had he grown to the Princess's delicate attentions that life without her and them seemed intolerable. He therefore arose, and chuckling till his double chins quivered and danced with merriment called loudly, "What, is there no man who can handle my daughter's fortune?" Sweethearts, he was sure that his trick had been successful and that his daughter would go on crocheting him slippers to the end of his days.
But it never does to be too sure. Goodness, no!!! For scarcely had the King finished speaking before a thundering knock shook the palace, and the next instant a giant hand came splintering through the wall, reached down, seized the iron ring and lifted the huge chest into the air as lightly as though it were a match box. Up, up, up before the terrified eyes of the Courtiers went the Princess's fortune, and the chest and the hand were withdrawn through the yawing hole in the wall. "In one month I will return for your daughter," roared the giant voice of Tonto. At this the excitement was terrific. The King fell flat upon his back. The Princess fell prone upon her face—prone, flat and slantwise tumbled everyone!
But Tonto, with the chest upon his back, hurried off to the deep woods and buried the chest under an oak tree, then, standing beside the oak tree, pretending to be its cousin, he thought and thought and thought how he could marry the Princess. For ten whole days and nights he thought and, at the end of the tenth night, he had come to the conclusion that he could only marry her by ceasing to be a giant. For nineteen days more he pondered upon this puzzling question, but on the night of the nineteenth day he strode quickly over the hills and dales until he had come down to the sea. He waded in, and when the water rose higher than his head he began swimming with all his might. On and on he plowed, faster than the fastest steamboat in the world till he came to the very centre of the sea.
In the centre of the sea, you know, is a tiny island where
