the Mule said to the young man: ‘Take a nail out from my shoe and drive it into the block of wood till you will split it.’ So he drew the nail, and he put it on the block of wood, and was going to split it, and the King called out for mercy, and he spared him. [Illustration: THE KING WAS HID IN THE YELLOW EGG.] After that he married the young lady, and himself and herself and the old King lived together, and there never were three people happier. And the Mule said: ‘Where will I go now?’ ‘Go back,’ says the Fool, ‘to your own place, for you know the way well to it. But come back here at the end of seven years,’ he said, ‘till you’ll see how am I getting on.’ So at the end of the seven years the Mule came back, and he asked to be taken into service. ‘I will never make a servant of you,’ says the Fool, ‘when I remember all the things you did for me, and all you helped me.’ ‘If that is so,’ says the Mule, ‘go and root up that little bush you see beyond, and give me three blows with the stump of it.’ So he did that, and with the three blows of the bush the enchantment went from the Mule, and who was he but the young man’s own father, the King that was thought to be dead. So they all four lived together then and ever since, and the time I saw them myself they were well and happy and having great riches. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ BESWARRAGAL I will tell you the story of Beswarragal, said the old man of a hundred years old. There was a King of Ireland out walking one time with his Grand Adviser. And they came to the side of a pool, and they saw in it a wild duck with a flock of twelve young ones, and she was pushing and beating away one of the young ones to make it leave the flock. ‘I wonder why is it the bird is doing that?’ said the King. ‘It is the right thing, whenever there is a family of twelve, to send one of them away to seek a fortune for himself,’ says the Grand Adviser. ‘If that is so,’ says the King, ‘what way can I know which one of my sons must I send away?’ ‘I will tell you that,’ says the Grand Adviser. ‘Let you watch them to-morrow the time they are coming home from the school, and close the gate on whichever one of them will be last, and let him be the one you will send away.’ So the next day they watched the twelve sons coming from the school, and the one that was last at the gate was the youngest of them all. ‘Oh, give him another chance,’ says the King. So the next day they watched again, and it was the same one, the youngest, that was last at the gate; and the third day it was the same thing. ‘Oh,’ says the King, ‘it is worse to me the youngest to go than any two of the others.’ ‘You need not mind that,’ says the Grand Adviser, ‘for I can tell you that the life he will have will be a happy one.’ ‘I am content so,’ says the King.