The next day they went out again, and the same thing happened, the bully tied up the princess where the serpent could come at her fair and easy, and went up himself to hide in the ivy-tree.  Then Jack put on the suit he had taken from the second giant, and he walked out, and the princess did not know him, but she told him all that had happened yesterday, and how some young gentleman she did not know had come and saved her.  So Jack asked might he lie down and take a sleep with his head in her lap, the way she could awake him.  And an happened the same way as the day before.  And the bully gave her up to the king, and said he had brought another of his friends to fight for her that day.

The next day she was brought down to the shore as before, and a great many people gathered to see the serpent that was coming to bring the king’s daughter away.  And Jack brought out the suit of clothes he had brought away from the third giant, and she did not know him, and they talked as before.  But when he was asleep this time, she thought she would make sure of being able to find him again, and she took out her scissors and cut off a piece of his hair, and made a little packet of it and put it away.  And she did another thing, she took off one of the shoes that was on his feet.

And when she saw the serpent coming she woke him, and he said, “This time I will put the serpent in a way that he will eat no more king’s daughters.”  So he took out the sword he had got from the giant, and he put it in at the back of the serpent’s neck, the way blood and water came spouting out that went for fifty miles inland, and made an end of him.  And then he made off, and no one saw what way he went, and the bully brought the princess to the king, and claimed to have saved her, and it is he who was made much of, and was the right-hand man after that.

But when the feast was made ready for the wedding, the princess took out the bit of hair she had, and she said she would marry no one but the man whose hair would match that, and she showed the shoe and said that she would marry no one whose foot would not fit that shoe as well.  And the bully tried to put on the shoe, but so much as his toe would not go into it, and as to his hair, it didn’t match at all to the bit of hair she had cut from the man that saved her.

So then the king gave a great ball, to bring all the chief men of the country together to try would the shoe fit any of them.  And they were all going to carpenters and joiners getting bits of their feet cut off to try could they wear the shoe, but it was no use, not one of them could get it on.

Then the king went to his chief adviser and asked what could he do.  And the chief adviser bade him to give another ball, and this time he said, “Give it to poor as well as rich.”

So the ball was given, and many came flocking to it, but the shoe would not fit any one of them.  And the chief adviser said, “Is every one here that belongs to the house?” “They are all here,” said the king, “except the boy that minds the cows, and I would not like him to be coming up here.”