stone, which went clean over the tower, and then one, my right foot still
on the ledge, which rising at least five yards above the steeple, did
fall down just at my feet. Without knowing it, I was showing off my gift
to others besides myself, doing what, perhaps, not five men in England
could do. Two men, who were passing by, stopped and looked at my
proceedings, and when I had done flinging came into the churchyard, and,
after paying me a compliment on what they had seen me do, proposed that I
should join company with them; I asked them who they were, and they told
me. The one was Hopping Ned, and the other Biting Giles. Both had their
gifts, by which they got their livelihood; Ned could hop a hundred yards
with any man in England, and Giles could lift up with his teeth any
dresser or kitchen table in the country, and, standing erect, hold it
dangling in his jaws. There's many a big oak table and dresser in
certain districts of England, which bear the marks of Giles's teeth; and
I make no doubt that, a hundred or two years hence, there'll be strange
stories about those marks, and that people will point them out as a proof
that there were giants in bygone times, and that many a dentist will
moralise on the decays which human teeth have undergone.

'They wanted me to go about with them, and exhibit my gift occasionally
as they did theirs, promising that the money that was got by the
exhibitions should be honestly divided. I consented, and we set off
together, and that evening coming to a village, and putting up at the
alehouse, all the grand folks of the village being there smoking their
pipes, we contrived to introduce the subject of hopping--the upshot being
that Ned hopped against the schoolmaster for a pound, and beat him
hollow; shortly after, Giles, for a wager, took up the kitchen table in
his jaws, though he had to pay a shilling to the landlady for the marks
he left, whose grandchildren will perhaps get money by exhibiting them.
As for myself, I did nothing that day, but the next, on which my