But soon after his father died, and his mother got married again to a
man that turned out to be a very vicious step-father, who couldn't abide
the little boy. So at last the step-father said: "If you bring that
bull-calf into this house, I'll kill it." What a villain he was, wasn't
he?
Now this little boy used to go out and feed his bull-calf every day with
barley bread, and when he did so this time, an old man came up to
him--we can guess who that was, eh?--and said to him: "You and your
bull-calf had better go away and seek your fortune."
So he went on and he went on and he went on, as far as I could tell you
till to-morrow night, and he went up to a farmhouse and begged a crust
of bread, and when he got back he broke it in two and gave half of it to
the bull-calf. And he went to another house and begged a bit of cheese
crud, and when he went back he wanted to give half of it to the
bull-calf. "No," says the bull-calf, "I'm going across the field, into
the wild-wood wilderness country, where there'll be tigers, leopards,
wolves, monkeys, and a fiery dragon, and I'll kill them all except the
fiery dragon, and he'll kill me.
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