"Mercy! mercy!" groan-ed, the o-gress, as she gaz-ed upon the aw-ful
depth be-neath her.

The hand gra-du-al-ly re-lax-ed its hold; and the o-gress, with one
des-pair-ing cry, whirl-ed o-ver and o-ver, and fell with such a plump
in-to the sea, that the spray flew o-ver the high-est tow-er, and the
fish-es swam a-way in ter-ror. She went down, down, down: but never came
up, up, up.

Wil-lie ran out of the front door; and when he got to the mar-gin of the
sea, he turn-ed his eye to the waves, ex-pect-ing every mo-ment to see
the head of the dread-ful o-gress pop up a-gain; but it did not. He saw
the good hands fol-low-ing him: they plun-ged into the sea close at his
feet; he jump-ed in-to the palm of one, and seat-ed himself. Be-tween
the fin-ger and thumb of each hand was one of his cook-ing forks, stuck
through two of the o-gress's ve-ry best hand-ker-chiefs, which made
ve-ry ad-mi-ra-ble sails, catch-ing the wind, and waft-ing him a-long
o-ver the sea as well as the fi-nest ship e-ver built.

[Illustration: THE PLOUGHING.]

As the moon rose, it found him safe-ly land-ed and snug under the roof
of a good farm-er who had pro-mi-sed him work--ay, e-ven as much as he
could do: but the farm-er did not know the trea-sure he pos-sess-ed, for
the next morn-ing lit-tle Wil-lie was work-ing in his shirt-sleeves in
the corn-field reap-ing and shear-ing as much as two men, and stout ones
too, could do in a long day. But there, un-der the shel-ter of the high
corn, were the friend-ly hands work-ing mi-ra-cles; ga-ther-ing up the
corn, and put-ting it in-to sheaves in a man-ner that could not be
e-qual-led by mor-tal hands.