In the morning Jack was sent out with the four-and-twenty cows, and the place he was told to drive them to had not a blade of grass in it for them, but was full of stones. So Jack looked about for some place where there would be better grass, and after a while he saw a field with good green grass in it, and it belonging to a giant. So he knocked down a bit of the wall and drove them in, and he went up himself into an apple-tree and began to eat the apples. Then the giant came into the field. ‘Fee-faw-fum,’ says he, ‘I smell the blood of an Irishman. I see you where you are, up in the tree,’ he said; ‘you are too big for one mouthful, and too small for two mouthfuls, and I don’t know what I’ll do with you if I don’t grind you up and make snuff for my nose.’ ‘As you are strong, be merciful,’ says Jack up in the tree. ‘Come down out of that, you little dwarf,’ said the giant, ‘or I’ll tear you and the tree asunder.’ So Jack came down. ‘Would you sooner be driving red-hot knives into one another’s hearts,’ said the giant, ‘or would you sooner be fighting one another on red-hot flags?’ ‘Fighting on red-hot flags is what I’m used to at home,’ said Jack, ‘and your dirty feet will be sinking in them and my feet will be rising.’ So then they began the fight. The ground that was hard they made soft, and the ground that was soft they made hard, and they made spring wells come up through the green flags. They were like that all through the day, no one getting the upper hand of the other, and at last a little bird came and sat on the bush and said to Jack, ‘If you don’t make an end of him by sunset, he’ll make an end of you.’ Then Jack put out his strength, and he brought the giant down on his knees. ‘Give me my life,’ says the giant, ‘and I’ll give you the three best gifts.’ ‘What are those?’ said Jack. ‘A sword that nothing can stand against, and a suit that when you put it on, you will see everybody, and nobody will see you, and a pair of shoes that will make you run faster than the wind blows.’ ‘Where are they to be found?’ said Jack. ‘In that red door you see there in the hill.’ So Jack went and got them out. ‘Where will I try the sword?’ says he. ‘Try it on that ugly black stump of a tree,’ says the giant. ‘I see nothing blacker or uglier than your own head,’ says Jack. And with that he made one stroke, and cut off the giant’s head that it went into the air, and he caught it on the sword as it was coming down, and made two halves of it. ‘It is well for you I did not join the body again,’ said the head, ‘or you would have never been able to strike it off again.’ ‘I did not give you the chance of that,’ said Jack. And he brought away the great suit with him. So he brought the cows home at evening, and every one wondered at all the milk they gave that night. And when the king was sitting at dinner with the princess, his daughter, and the rest, he said, ‘I think I only hear two roars from beyond to-night in place of three.’