had killed my thirteen knights in a three hours' battle,
and taken me prisoner, sparing my life in order that so
strange a curiosity as I was might be exhibited to the
wonder and admiration of the king and the court. He
spoke of me all the time, in the blandest way, as "this
prodigious giant," and "this horrible sky-towering
monster," and "this tusked and taloned man-devour-
ing ogre", and everybody took in all this bosh in the
naivest way, and never smiled or seemed to notice that
there was any discrepancy between these watered statis-
tics and me. He said that in trying to escape from him
I sprang into the top of a tree two hundred cubits high
at a single bound, but he dislodged me with a stone the
size of a cow, which "all-to brast" the most of my
bones, and then swore me to appear at Arthur's court