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The fisherman had his net over one arm and his cap of gold in the other hand; nevertheless, there he felt the same hairy thing he had felt before. He flung his leg over it, and away he was gone through the air like a sky-rocket.

Now, he had grown somewhat used to strange things by this time, so he began to think that he would like to see what sort of a creature it was upon which he was riding thus through the sky. So he contrived, in spite of his net and cap, to push up the handkerchief from over one eye. Out he peeped, and then he saw as clear as day what the strange steed was.

He was riding upon a he-goat as black as night, and in front of him was the magician riding upon just such another, his great red robe fluttering out behind him in the moonlight like huge red wings.

“Great herring and little fishes!” roared the fisherman; “it is a billy-goat!”

Instantly goats, old man, and all were gone like a flash. Down fell the fisherman through the empty sky, whirling over and over and around and around like a frog. He held tightly to his net, but away flew his fur cap, the golden money falling in a shower like sparks of yellow light. Down he fell and down he fell, until his head spun like a top.

By good-luck his house was just below, with its thatch of soft rushes. Into the very middle of it he tumbled, and right through the thatch–bump!–into the room below.

The good wife was in bed, snoring away for dear life; but such a noise as the fisherman made coming into the house was enough to wake the dead. Up she jumped, and there she sat, staring and winking with sleep, and with her brains as addled as a duck’s egg in a thunder-storm.

“There!” said the fisherman, as he gathered himself up and rubbed his shoulder, “that is what comes of following a woman’s advice!”

All the good folk clapped their hands, not so much because of the story itself, but because it was a woman who told it.

“Aye, aye,” said the brave little Tailor, “there is truth in what you tell, fair lady, and I like very well the way in which you have told it.”

“Whose turn is it next?” said Doctor Faustus, lighting a fresh pipe of tobacco.

“Tis the turn of yonder old gentleman,” said the Soldier who cheated the Devil, and he pointed with the stem of his pipe to the Fisherman who unbottled the Genie that King Solomon had corked up and thrown into the sea. “Every one else hath told a story, and now it is his turn.”

“I will not deny, my friend, that what you say is true, and that it is my turn,” said the Fisherman. “Nor will I deny that I have already a story in my mind. It is,” said he, “about a certain prince, and of how he went through many and one adventures, and at last discovered that which is–“