The old Giantess saw them coming from the turret loophole. She was very much frightened, for she guessed that something had happened to her husband; and as she came downstairs very fast she caught her foot in her dress, and fell from the top to the bottom and broke her neck. When the people outside found that the door was not opened to them, they took crowbars and forced the portal. Nobody was to be seen, but on leaving the mall they found the body of the Giantess at the foot of the stairs. Thus Jack took possession of the castle. The Fairy went and brought his mother to him, with the hen and the harp. He had the Giantess buried, and endeavored as much as lay in his power to do right to those whom the Giant had robbed. Before her departure for fairyland, the Fairy explained to Jack that she had sent the butcher to meet him with the beans, in order to try what sort of lad he was. “If you had looked at the gigantic Beanstalk and only stupidly wondered about it,” she said, “I should have left you where misfortune had placed you, only restoring her cow to your mother. But you showed an inquiring mind, and great courage and enterprise, therefore you deserve to rise; and when you mounted the Beanstalk you climbed the Ladder of Fortune.” She then took her leave of Jack and his mother. HOP-O’-MY-THUMB Retold by Joseph Jacobs Once upon a time there was a Wood-cutter and his wife who had seven children, all boys. The eldest was only ten years old. They were very poor, and their seven children were a great burden, since not one of them was able to earn his living. What troubled them still more was the fact that the youngest was not only very delicate, but silent, which they took for stupidity, but which was really a mark of his good sense. He was very small, and when he was born he was scarcely bigger than one’s thumb, which caused him to be called little “Hop-o’-My-Thumb.” This poor child was the scapegoat of the house, and was blamed for everything. He was, however, sharper and wiser than all his brothers, and though he spoke little, he listened a great deal. At last there came a bad year, and so great a famine, that the poor people resolved to rid themselves of their children. One evening, when the children were all in bed, and the Wood-cutter with a sorrowful heart, was sitting by the fire with his wife, he said to her: “You know that we can no longer support our children. I cannot let them die of hunger before my eyes, and I am resolved to take them to the wood to-morrow, and lose them. It will be easy to do this, for, while they amuse themselves tying my sticks, we have only to slip away without their seeing us.”