The oak got
bigger and stouter at every stroke, and the rock didn't get softer,
either. So one day those three brothers thought they'd set off and
try too, and their father hadn't a word against it; for even if they
didn't get the Princess and half the kingdom, it might happen they
might get a place somewhere with a good master; and that was all he
wanted. So when the brothers said they thought of going to the palace,
their father said "yes" at once. So Peter, Paul, and Jack went off
from their home.
Well, they hadn't gone far before they came to a fir-wood, and up
along one side of it rose a steep hillside, and as they went, they
heard something hewing and hacking away up on the hill among the
trees.
"I wonder, now, what it is that is hewing away up yonder," said Jack.
"You're always so clever with your wonderings," said Peter and Paul
both at once. "What wonder is it, pray, that a woodcutter should stand
and hack up on a hillside?"
"Still, I'd like to see what it is, after all," said Jack; and up he
went.
"Oh, if you're such a child, 'twill do you good to go and take a
lesson," bawled out his brothers after him.
But Jack didn't care for what they said; he climbed the steep hillside
towards where the noise came, and when he reached the place, what do
you think he saw? Why, an axe that stood there hacking and hewing, all
of itself, at the trunk of a fir.
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