“‘Now, Jack,’ says she, ’I told you that I would make you rich.  You know the rock beside your mother’s cabin; in the east end of that rock there is a loose stone, covered over with gray moss, just two feet below the cleft out of which the hanging rowan-tree grows—­pull that stone out, and you will find more goold than would make a duke.  Neither speak to any person, nor let any living thing touch your lips till you come back to me, or you’ll forget that you ever saw me, and I’ll lie left poor and friendless in a strange, country.’

“‘Why, thin, manim asthee hu,’ (* My soul’s within you.) says Jack, ’but the best way to guard against that, is to touch your own sweet lips at the present time,’ says he, giving her a smack that you’d hear, of a calm evening, acrass a couple of fields.  Jack set off to touch the money, with such speed that when he fell he scarcely waited to rise again; he was soon at the rock, any how, and without either doubt or disparagement, there was a cleft of real goolden guineas, as fresh as daisies.  The first thing he did, after he had filled his pockets with them, was to look if his mother’s cabin was to the fore; and there surely it was, as snug as ever, with the same dacent column of smoke rowling from the chimbley.

“‘Well,’ thought he, ’I’ll just stale over to the door-cheek, and peep in to get one sight of my poor mother; then I’ll throw her in a handful of these guineas, and take to my scrapers.’

“Accordingly, he stole up at a half bend to the door, and was just going to take a peep in, when out comes the little dog Trig, and begins to leap and fawn upon him, as if it would eat him.  The mother, too, came running out to see what was the matter, when the dog made another spring up about Jack’s neck, and gave his lips the slightest lick in the world with its tongue, the crathur was so glad to see him:  the next minute, Jack forgot the lady, as clane as if he had never seen her; but if he forgot her, catch him at forgetting the money—­not he, avick!—­that stuck to him like pitch.

“When the mother saw who it was, she flew to him, and, clasping her arms about his neck, hugged him till she wasn’t worth three halfpence.  After Jack sot a while, he made a trial to let her know what had happened him, but he disremembered it all, except having the money in the rock, so he up and tould her that, and a glad woman she was to hear of his good fortune.  Still he kept the place where the goold was to himself, having been often forbid by her ever to trust a woman with a sacret when he could avoid it.

“Now everybody knows what changes the money makes, and Jack was no exception to this ould saying.  In a few years he built himself a fine castle, with three hundred and sixty-four windies in it, and he would have added another, to make one for every day in the year, only that would be equal to the number in the King’s palace, and the Lord of the Black Rod would be sent to take his head off, it being high