at the door of the kitchen, and two at the great door, and one
outside the house. And then she and her husband went to the
stable, and mounted the fine grey filly, and rode off as fast as
they could. Presently the Giant called out, "Are you asleep
yet?" and the apple at the head of the bed said, "We are not
asleep." Then he called again, and the apple at the foot of the
bed said the same thing; and then he asked again and again,
until the apple outside the house door answered; and then he
knew that a trick had been played on him, and ran to the bedroom
and found it empty. And then he pursued the runaways as fast as
possible. Now at day-break--"at the mouth of day," the story-
teller says--the Giant's daughter said to her husband, "My
father's breath is burning my back; put thy hand into the ear of
the grey filly, and whatever thou findest, throw it behind
thee." "There is a twig of sloe-tree," he said. "Throw it behind
thee," said she; and he did so, and twenty miles of black-thorn
wood grew out of it, so thick that a weasel could not get
through. But the Giant cut through it with his big axe and his
wood-knife, and went after them again. At the heat of day the
Giant's daughter said again, "My father's breath is burning my
back;" and then her husband put his finger in the filly's ear,
and took out a piece of grey stone, and threw it behind him, and
there grew up directly a great rock twenty miles broad and
twenty miles high. Then the Giant got his mattock and his lever,
and made a way through the rocks, and came after them again. Now
it was near sunset, and once more the Giant's daughter felt her
father's breath burning her back. So, for the third time, her
husband put his hand into the filly's ear, and took out a
bladder of water, and he threw it behind him, and there was a
fresh-water loch, twenty miles long and twenty miles broad; and