Page:MU KPB 016 Arthur Rackham's Book of Pictures.pdf/18

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14 JACK AND THE BEAN STALK
Jack clambers down the beanstalk and chops it through with his axe; and the giant who is descending after him falls to the earth and is killed.
15 PUSS IN BOOTS
Puss in Boots was the sole possession of a poor youth. The cat, however, manages by a succession of clever tricks to make his master’s fortune. He gains for him the fine castle and vast estates that belonged to an ogre by the same device that Loge used to get the Ring of the Niblungs from Alberich. He calls at the castle and, by pretending to doubt the ogre’s magic powers, he induces him to change himself first into a lion and then into a mouse, whereupon he falls upon him and eats him up.
Perrault.
16 ADRIFT
“I will put on my new red shoes,” she said one morning, “those which Kay has not seen, and then I will go down to the river and ask it about him.”

It was quite early; little Gerda kissed her old grandmother, who was asleep, put on the red shoes, and went out quite alone through the town gate towards the river.

“Is it true that you have taken my little play­mate? I will make you a present of my red shoes if you will give him back to me.”

And she thought the waves nodded to her so strangely; she then took her red shoes, the most precious she had, and threw them both out into the river, but they fell close to the bank and the little billows soon carried them ashore to her; it seemed as if the river would not take the dearest treasure she had because it could not give back little Kay to her; but then she thought she had not thrown the shoes out far enough, and so she climbed into a boat which was lying among the rushes, and went right to the farthest end of it and threw the shoes into the water; but the boat was not fastened, and its motion as she got into

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