Ah, the thick-witted old rogue of a giant! He threw down the golden apples, and received back the sky, from the head and shoulders of Hercules, upon his own, where it rightly belonged. And Hercules picked up the three golden apples, that were as big or bigger than pumpkins, and straightway set out on his journey homeward, without paying the slightest heed to the thundering tones of the giant, who bellowed after him to come back. Another forest sprang up around his feet, and grew ancient there; and again might be seen oak-trees, of six or seven centuries old, that had waxed thus again betwixt his enormous toes.
And there stands the giant, to this day; or, at any rate, there stands a mountain as tall as he, and which bears his name; and when the thunder rumples about its summit, we may imagine it to be the voice of Giant Atlas, bellowing after Hercules!
TANGLEWOOD FIRESIDE.
AFTER THE STORY.
“Cousin Eustace,” demanded Sweet Fern, who had been sitting at the story-teller’s feet, with his mouth wide open, “exactly how tall was this giant?”
“O Sweet Fern, Sweet Fern!” cried the student, “do you think I was there, to measure him with a yardstick? Well, if you must know to a hair’s-breadth, I suppose he might be from three to fifteen miles straight upward, and that he might have seated himself on Taconic, and had Monument Mountain for a footstool.”
“Dear me!” ejaculated the good little boy, with a contented sort of a grunt, “that was a giant, sure enough! And how long was his little finger?”
“As long as from Tanglewood to the lake,” said Eustace.
“Sure enough, that was a giant!” repeated Sweet Fern, in an ecstasy at the precision of these measurements. “And how broad, I wonder, were the shoulders of Hercules?”
“That is what I have never been able to find out,” answered the student. “But I think they must have been a great deal broader than mine, or than your father’s, or than almost any shoulders which one sees nowadays.”