We like to linger over these pleasant times, for the old Titan when he took much delight in his charge. But alas! the sequel must be told in sorrow and tears for female frailty.
We don't like to--and indeed we wont--repeat all the stories handed down, which for the most part are highly unfavourable to the moral character of Treen Giantess, for fear of slandering her unwittingly. Yet it is no worse than she deserves to say that all traditions agree in representing her as a most abandoned female in her latter years.
All her care and attention were bestowed on the boy and she neglected her old husband, so that he had to dive for fish, and skin oxen, (or eat them skin, horns, and all). Sheep he could seldom get; they were dainties reserved for the young fellow. The poor old giant was often driven to such extremities that, to appease hunger, which makes brutes of the best of men, he was fain to stay his stomach on ore-weed.
To add insult to injury she often taunted her aged spouse with his weakness, which was the consequence of her neglect, and cut him to the heart by making unfavourable comparisons between him and the pampered youth who could now log the rock from sitting on the grass; and that was more, as the giantess told her husband, than he could do in the best of his time.
Worst of all, her maternal love then changed into a passion that, all things considered, one might even now, in these times of lax morality and free-love, regard as reprehensible.
The poor old giant was slow to become jealous, till he found himself utterly forsaken by his spouse and adopted son, who always stole away to sunny glades between the carns to play by themselves. That would have passed, however, without notice,--he rather liked to be left alone, to dose in his chair of afternoons--had not some Treen women, who were sharp in such things, spied what was going on, and, out of envy, told the old giant. He then became very surly and gave the doting pair much annoyance by coming on them unawares when they withdrew to enjoy their amorous diversion. They had seldom much comfort then, except when the old fellow left his castle to get provision.
One winter's day, when he was about to start for this purpose, he told his wife and the youngster that one of them should meet him on his way back to assist in taking home whatever he might procure.