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“O!!!” shouted all the people, and they pulled the rope with a terrible jerk. Up sprang the Giant, but there stood the Kyrofatalapynx, with his long iron arrow already fitted into his bow. “Ha, ha!” he cried, “I shall put it through you–twang!” And he drew his arrow to its very head, and all the people fell down on their faces, and even Tur-il-i-ra turned a little pale. But snap! went the bowstring, and down fell the arrow! Then up rushed the Giant, and with one crushing blow of his rock-knobbed club, he laid the Kyrofatalapynx stone-dead!

The King, and the Queen, and the princesses, and all the people, jumped up, and in their wild joy they would have kissed the clothes off the good Giant, had he been willing to wait.

“All right!” he cried; “I must be off. I’ve a friend at home waiting for me. No thanks. You can stuff him now. Good-by!”

And away he went, and poor little Ting-a-ling was left behind!

When he saw the Giant walking away like a steam-engine on stilts, Ting-a-ling began to cry.

“Did you come with him?” said the green fairy. “Well, he’s gone, and you can live with me now.”

But Ting-a-ling was so overcome with sorrow, and begged so hard that his new friend should tell him of some way to follow the Giant, that the latter, after thinking a while, took him up into the King’s pigeon-house. Warning him to be careful not to let any of the birds pick him up, the green fairy pointed out a gray pigeon to Ting-a-ling.

“Now,” said he, “if we can get a string around the middle feather of his tail, we are all right.”

“How so?” asked Ting-a-ling.

“Why, then you get on, and start him off, and by pulling the string you can make him go any way you wish; for you know he steers himself with his tail.”

“Good!” cried Ting-a-ling, and they both looked for a string. When they had found one, they stole up to the pigeon, who was eating corn, and tied it fast to the middle feather of his tail, without his knowing anything about it.

“Now jump on and I’ll start him off,” said the green fairy; and Ting-a-ling ran up the pigeon’s tail (which almost touched the floor), and took his seat on its back, holding tight on to its feathers. Then the green fairy ran around by the pigeon’s head, and shouted in its ear, as it was pecking corn,–“Hawk!”

The bird just lifted up its head, and gave one shoot right out of the window of the pigeon-house. It went high up into the air; and Ting-a-ling, when he looked around and saw which way he ought to go, pulled his string this way and that way, and he found that he could steer the pigeon very well, and even make him keep up in the air, by pulling his tail-feather straight up. So on they went, and they got to the Giant’s castle before the Giant himself. The pigeon flew over the castle, but Ting-a-ling steered him back again, and backward and forward, two or three times, until the bird thought he might as well stop there; and so he alighted on the roof, and off jumped Ting-a-ling. The first thing he saw there, after the pigeon had flown away again, was the green fairy!

“Why, where did you come from?” cried Ting-a-ling.

“O,” said the other, laughing, and jumping up and down, “I thought I’d come too, and I hung on to his leg. It was nice, sitting up among his warm feathers, when his legs were curled up under him; a great deal better than being on top.”

Ting-a-ling was very glad to have his friend with him, and he took him down-stairs. When the Giant got home, there they were, both in the middle of the table in the great hall, ready to welcome him. Tur-il-i-ra did not ask where the green fairy came from; but he was glad to see him, and he ordered supper to be laid on a table out on the lawn; for he was warm with his long walk. After supper, the two fairies came down to the Giant’s end of the table, and he told them all that had happened, and how fortunate it was that the bowstring of the Kyrofatalapynx had broken.