While he was sitting there, a great giant came striding over the hill. "Do you see that tall steeple-man?" said the father; "if you don't take care he will run away with you." Now he only said this to frighten the little boy and keep him from straying away. But the giant had long legs, and with two or three strides he really came close to the furrow, and picked up Master Thumbling, to look at him as he would at a beetle or a cockchafer. Then he let him run about his broad hand, and taking a liking to the little chap went off with him. The father stood by all the time, but could not say a word for fright; for he thought his child was really lost, and that he should never see him again.
But the giant took care of him at his house in the woods, and laid him in his bosom, and fed him with the same food that he lived upon himself. So Thumbling, instead of being a little dwarf, became like the giant—tall, and stout, and strong:—so that at the end of two years, when the old giant took him into the woods to try him, and said, "Pull up that birch-tree for yourself to walk with," the lad was so strong that he tore it up by the root. The giant thought he would make him a still stronger man than this: so after taking care of him two years more he took him into the wood to try his strength again. This time he took hold of one of the thickest oaks, and pulled it up as if it were mere sport to him. Then the old giant said, "Well done, my man! you will do now." So he carried him back to the field where he first found him.
His father happened to be just then ploughing his field again, as he was when he lost his son. The young giant went up to him and said, "Look here, father, see who I am:—don't you know your own son?" But the
