130 English Fairy Tales pay you well.’” So he agreed, and served the carpenter for a year and a day. “Now,” said the master, “I will give you your wage;” and he presented him with a table, telling him he had but to say, “Table, be covered,” and at once it would be spread with lots to eat and drink. Jack hitched the table on his back, and away he went with it till he came to the inn. “Well, host,” shouted he, “my dinner to-day, and that of the best.” “Very sorry, but there is nothing in the house but ham and eggs.” “Ham and eggs for me!” exclaimed Jack. “I can do better than that.—Come, my table, be covered!” At once the table was spread with turkey and sausages, roast mutton, potatoes, and greens. The publican opened his eyes, but he said nothing, not he. That night he fetched down from his attic a table very like that of Jack, and exchanged the two. Jack, none the wiser, next morning hitched the worthless table on to his back and carried it home. “Now, father, may I marry my lass?” he asked. “Not unless you can keep her,” replied the father. “Look here!” exclaimed Jack. “Father, I have a table which does all my bidding.” “Let me see it,” said the old man. The lad set it in the middle of the room, and bade it be covered; but all in vain, the table remained bare. In a rage, the father caught the warming-pan down from the wall and warmed his son’s back with it so that the boy fled howling from the house, and ran and ran till he came to a river and tumbled in. A man picked him out and bade him assist him in making a bridge over the river; and how do you think he was doing it? Why, by casting a tree across; so Jack climbed up to the top of the tree and threw his weight on it, so that when the man had rooted the tree up, Jack and the tree- head dropped on the farther bank. “Thank you,” said the man; “and now for what you have done I will pay you;” so saying, he tore a branch from the tree, and fettled it up into a club with his knife. “There,” exclaimed he; “take this stick, and when you say to it, ‘Up stick and bang him,’ it will knock any one down who angers you.” The lad was overjoyed to get this stick—so away he went