The Pumpkin Giant lived in a castle, as a matter of course; it is not fashionable for a giant to live in any other kind of a dwelling—­why, nothing would be more tame and uninteresting than a giant in a two-story white house with green blinds and a picket fence, or even a brown-stone front, if he could get into either of them, which he could not.

The Giant’s castle was situated on a mountain, as it ought to have been, and there was also the usual courtyard before it, and the customary moat, which was full of—­bones!  All I have got to say about these bones is, they were not mutton bones.  A great many details of this story must be left to the imagination of the reader; they are too harrowing to relate.  A much tenderer regard for the feelings of the audience will be shown in this than in most giant stories; we will even go so far as to state in advance, that the story has a good end, thereby enabling readers to peruse it comfortably without unpleasant suspense.

The Pumpkin Giant was fonder of little boys and girls than anything else in the world; but he was somewhat fonder of little boys, and more particularly of fat little boys.

The fear and horror of this Giant extended over the whole country.  Even the King on his throne was so severely afflicted with the Giant’s Shakes that he had been obliged to have the throne propped, for fear it should topple over in some unusually violent fit.  There was good reason why the King shook:  his only daughter, the Princess Ariadne Diana, was probably the fattest princess in the whole world at that date.  So fat was she that she had never walked a step in the dozen years of her life, being totally unable to progress over the earth by any method except rolling.  And a really beautiful sight it was, too, to see the Princess Ariadne Diana, in her cloth-of-gold rolling-suit, faced with green velvet and edged with ermine, with her glittering crown on her head, trundling along the avenues of the royal gardens, which had been furnished with strips of rich carpeting for her express accommodation.

But gratifying as it would have been to the King, her sire, under other circumstances, to have had such an unusually interesting daughter, it now only served to fill his heart with the greatest anxiety on her account.  The Princess was never allowed to leave the palace without a body-guard of fifty knights, the very flower of the King’s troops, with lances in rest, but in spite of all this precaution, the King shook.

Meanwhile amongst the ordinary people who could not procure an escort of fifty armed knights for the plump among their children, the ravages of the Pumpkin Giant were frightful.  It was apprehended at one time that there would be very few fat little girls, and no fat little boys at all, left in the kingdom.  And what made matters worse, at that time the Giant commenced taking a tonic to increase his appetite.

Finally the King, in desperation, issued a proclamation that he would knight any one, be he noble or common, who should cut off the head of the Pumpkin Giant.  This was the King’s usual method of rewarding any noble deed in his kingdom.  It was a cheap method, and besides everybody liked to be a knight.