‘My dear,’ says Jack, ‘I could do it,’ he says.
‘With what?’ she says.
‘With my rod.’
He touched the water with his rod, and up springs as nice a bridge as ever you have seen up out of the water. Him being laughing and joking with this young girl, he come away and forgot the bridge standing. He comes home. Next day following he goes off again shooting with the king again, and the Black Dog of the Wild Forest comes to the king’s house.
He says to th’ owd lady herself, ‘Whatever you do to-morrow, Jack will be going out shooting again, and you get Jack to leave his two little dogs, as I am going to devour Jack. And whatever you do, you fasten ’em down in the cellar to-morrow, and I will follow Jack to the forest where he is going shooting. And if Jack kills me, he will bring me back on the top of his horse on the front of him; and you will say to him, “O Jack, what ever are you going to do with that?” “I am going to make a fire of it,” he will say. And he will burn me, and when he burns me he will burn me to dust. And you get a small bit of stick—Jack will go away and leave me after—and you go and rake my dust about, and you will find a lucky-bone. And when Jack goes to his bed, you drop this lucky-bone in Jack’s ear, he will never rise no more, and you can take and bury him.’
Now the old lady was against Jack a lot for being there. So the Black Dog of the Wild Forest told th’ owd lady the way to kill Jack. ‘So see as when Jack brings me back and burns me, you look in my dust, and you will find a lucky-bone, and you drop it when Jack goes to bed, drop it into his ear, and Jack will never rise from his bed no more, he will be dead. Take Jack and bury him.’
Jack goes to the forest a-shooting, and the Black Dog of the Wild Forest follows him, and Jack begin to cry. Now if the fire came from his mouth the first time, it came a hundred times more, and Jack begin to cry.
‘Oh dear!’ he cried, ‘where is my little Hear-all and Spring-all?’ [[270]]
He had no sooner said the words, five minutes but scarcely, comes up the two little dogs, and they ’s a very terrible fight. But Jack masters him and kills him. He brings home the Black Dog of the Wild Forest on the front of his horse; he brings him back, Jack, on the front of his horse; and the king says, ‘What ever are you going to do with that?’
‘I’m going to burn him.’