"WITTYSPLINTER THREW LARGE STONES ON HIM."
And now Wittysplinter took the key of the castle and ran with it to King Roundabout, who immediately betook himself to the castle, along with his wife Flosk and her daughter Flink and Wittysplinter, and inspected all there was to be seen there. After they had spent fourteen whole days in looking at an immense number of rooms, chambers, cellars, look-out towers, bakeries, furnaces, kitchens, wood-stove houses, dining-rooms, smoking-rooms, wash-houses, etc., the King asked Wittysplinter what he would like as a reward for his faithful services. And Wittysplinter replied that he would like to marry the Princess Flink, if it were agreeable to her. The Princess very readily consented, and they were married and lived in the giant's castle, where they are to be found to this day.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The custom of wishing one "Good Health" after a sneeze, prevalent in Germany and other European countries, is supposed to have origin in the fact that the crisis, or turning-point for better or worse of a certain fever, is indicated by a sneeze from the patient, and hence the natural expression of a hope for a favourable recovery.
The Mid-day Rock.
ONCE upon a time there was a poor man, who lived somewhere in the middle of the woods near a place called Gâtines de Treigny. Everybody called him Father Rameau. Not that he had any children—he had not even ever been married; nor that he was very old, for he was barely fifty; but he had always had such a hard time of it that his hair had grown grey very early, and his back had been bent and bowed long before its time.
He was generally to be seen toiling along under a big bundle of brooms, which he made with the greatest skill from young birch branches, selling them on market days to the housewives of Saint-Amand or Saint-Sauveur.