And, sure enough, the farmer and his men were coming as fast as they could lay foot to the ground. But when the ogre heard them coming, he felt sure that it was time that he was getting away home again, and so he tried to get out of the same window that he had gotten in a little while before. But he had stuffed himself with so much of the good things that he had swelled like everything, and there he stuck in the storehouse window like a cork in a bottle, and could budge neither one way nor the other; and that was a pretty pickle to be in. “Oho!” says the farmer, “you were after my sausages and my puddings, were you? Then you will come no more.” And that was so; for when the farmer and his men were done with the ogre he never went into the woods again, for he could not. As for the three little pigs, they trotted away into the woods every day of their lives, for there was nobody nowadays to stop them from gathering all the acorns that they wanted. [Illustration: The Ogre sticks fast in the window.] Now, don’t you believe folks when they say that this is _all_ stuff and nonsense that I have been telling you; for if you turn it upside down and look in the bottom of it you will find that there is more than one grain of truth there; that is if you care to scratch among the chaff for it. And that is the end of this story. [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] Eight O’Clock· The little _Bats_ fly [Sidenote: _Cooler winds._] About in the _Sky_, And the _Kobold_’s wide awake. The great black _Trees_ [Sidenote: ●] Are stirred in the _Breeze_, And a curious _Sound_ they make. The _Plays_ are done, [Sidenote: ☽] And the _Prayers_ are said, And the _Children_ are snugly Tucked in _Bed_. [Sidenote: K.P.] [Illustration: The Staff and The Fiddle.] XX. _The wind of heaven blows the chips and the straws together._ There was a fiddler, a tinker, and a shoemaker jogging along the road, but whatever brought them in company is more than I am able to tell you. All the same, there they were, and, after all, that is the kernel of the nut. The fiddler was as merry a little toad as ever a body could wish to see; as for the tinker and the shoemaker, why, they were as sour as bad beer. Well, they plodded along, all three of them, until by and by they came to a cross-road, and there sat an old body begging; “Dear, good, kind gentlemen, give a poor old woman a penny or two. Do now.” “Pooh!” says the tinker and the shoemaker, and off they walked with their noses in the air as though they were hunting for flies up yonder. As for the fiddler, he had another kind of a heart under his jacket; “Come,” says he, “we are all chicks in the same puddle.” So he gave the old woman all that he had, which was only two pennies.