he got his rights for the meal he had lost.<SPAN name="Page_28" id="Page_28" /></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><SPAN name="IV" id="IV" />IV</h2>
<h3>THE LAD AND THE DEIL</h3>
<p>Once on a time there was a lad who was walking along a road cracking
nuts, so he found one that was worm-eaten, and just at that very moment
he met the Deil.</p>
<p>"Is it true, now," said the lad, "what they say, that the Deil can make
himself as small as he chooses, and thrust himself on through a
pinhole?"</p>
<p>"Yes, it is," said the Deil.</p>
<p>"Oh! it is, is it? then let me see you do it, and just creep into this
nut," said the lad.</p>
<p>So the Deil did it.</p>
<p>Now, when he had crept well into it through the worm's hole, the lad
stopped it up with a pin.</p>
<p>"Now, I've got you safe," he said, and put the nut into his pocket.</p>
<p>So when he had walked on a bit, he came to a smithy, and he turned in
and asked the <SPAN name="Page_29" id="Page_29" />smith if he'd be good enough to crack that nut for him.</p>
<p>"Ay, that'll be an easy job," said the smith, and took his smallest
hammer, laid the nut on the anvil, and gave it a blow, but it wouldn't
break.</p>
<p>So he took another hammer a little bigger, but that wasn't heavy enough
either.</p>
<p>Then he took one bigger still, but it was still the same story; and so
the smith got wroth, and grasped his great sledge-hammer.</p>
<p>"Now, I'll crack you to bits," he said, and let drive at the nut with
all his might and main. And so the nut flew to pieces with a bang that
blew off half the roof of the smithy, and the whole house creaked and
groaned as though it were ready to fall.</p>
<p>"Why! if I don't think the Deil must have been in that nut," said the
smith.</p>
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