Three good giants

skip from side to side like a monkey. All this time Gargantua, seated on his great Mare, did not feel the rain any more than if it was not roaring and hissing around him, filling all the streams along the road, and making a deluge around the Ford. He was soon to see, however, that if he himself, being a Giant, could stand this sudden flood, smaller men could not. The first thing he heard on going a little farther, from some people who were running to the high grounds for safety, was that the Ford was all swollen, and that thousands of men had been drowned in it.

He could not understand this, — of course he could not, being a Giant, — but what he did understand better was what that sly little page Eudemon, who had galloped ahead to get shelter from the rain, told him. The news Eudemon brought was that Picrochole's men were in a Castle this side of the Ford, and that before his master could hope to reach it he must take ¥ the Castle, or they would take him.

In a little came near tie. The while they the Cas-

THE CASTLE OF BOCHE-CLERMAUD.

great, gloomy seemed deserted, was to be seen dow or turret.

the front of it, Gar-out at the top of his voice to those inside : — building Not a face either from win-Riding alone to gantua shouted

"Are you there, or are you not? If you are there, don't stay! If you are not there, I shall have all this trouble for nothing."

All the answer a bold cannoneer, who had not been seen, and who was watching behind the ramparts, gave, was, after taking aim point-blank, to fire his cannon off, the ball furiously striking Gargantua on the right temple, but for all that not hurting him in the least.

" What is that?" he shouted. "How, are those fellows throwing

CANNONADING GAROANTUA.

grape-seeds at us ? If they are, the harvest will cost them dear," thinking that the balls were only grape-seeds.

On hearing his words — they could have been heard a mile off— those in the Castle rushed pell-mell to the towers and ramparts, and

GABGANTUA DESTROYS THE CASTLE.

fired more than nine thousand and twenty-five shots from their falcons and arquebuses, aiming each shot straight at Gargantua's head, which towered high above the ramparts. The guns were well pointed, and the balls hit the Giant so often that they began to bother him.

"Look here, Ponocrates, niy friend," he called to Ponocrates, who had just come up ; " these flies are blinding my eyes ! Jump down, please, and get me the biggest branch you can find to drive them away."

All this time, he was fully convinced that the leaden balls and the big stones hurled from the artillery were so many flies.

Giants are always very hard-headed, and sometimes as simple as they are hard-headed. Ponocrates, who knew better than that, told him what it was that was falling around him. Then, for the first time, Gargantua got really mad. He raised his big tree in proper position, and, turning the head of his Mare well towards the Castle, rushed furiously against the walls, tearing down all the towers and buttresses, and laying them in ruins on the ground. Not one of all those in the Castle, who had been laughing and making Gargantua their target from the ramparts, escaped. Paying no more attention to the ruins he went on to the mill-bridge, and found all the Ford, swollen by the rain, covered over with corpses, and in such number that the dead bodies had actually caused the water of the mill to stop running. Standing on the bank the party waited a bit, not at all liking to ride over dead men. That skipping monkey, Gymnaste, was the first to cross. He loudly swore that his horse was afraid of nothing, and that at home the beast never could get his feed without first stepping over a stuffed body, always put for that purpose in his way.

This satisfied the others, who soon crossed after Gymnaste, and Gargantua and his great Mare slowly followed, last of all.

CHAPTER XVIII. HOW GARGANTUA COMBED CANNON-BALLS OUT OF HIS HAIR, AND HOW HE ATE SIX PILGRIMS IN A SALAD BEFORE SUPPER.