This proclamation set all the people in a ferment. Everybody wished to gain the prize, and everybody began to devise some plan by which to do it. It was now Monday, and as Christmas came on the following Saturday, there was no time to be lost. All day Tuesday great people and common people thronged to the giant's castle to try to persuade him to change his mind about going away at Christmas-time. Some of these the giant listened to, some he laughed at, and some he told to go home. About noon he put up a placard in front of his castle, and shut the great door. The placard read thus:
"Any person coming up here to disturb me with propositions about Christmas, shall be thrown back to his home, wherever that may be.
Shamruck."
After this nobody knocked at the giant's door.
About a dozen miles from Shamruck's castle there lived two young giants. They had heard of the King's proclamation. They laughed when they heard of the placard on Shamruck's castle. "He can't throw us anywhere," they said. "We are nearly as powerful as he is. If we want to make him stay at home, all we have to do is to do it. If he attempts to go away, we will just take hold of him, and show him that two giants are better than one."
The next day the two young giants met Shamruck taking a walk by a river-bank not far from his castle. They went up to him and spoke to him very civilly.
"Shamruck," they said, "the King desires that you will stay at home this Christmas, and we have undertaken to carry out his wishes. So you must go back to your castle, and stay there until Saturday morning."
"Suppose I don't do it?" said Shamruck.
"Then we will take you back," said the young giants.
"Very well, then, I don't do it," remarked Shamruck.