goods. And he was taken before
the judge, found guilty, and sentenced to death.

Fortunately, his old mother was a Wise Woman. And when she heard that
he was condemned, she said, "Only follow my directions, and we may
save you yet; for I guess how it is."

So she went to the judge, and begged for her son three favours before
his death.

"I will grant them," said the judge, "if you do not ask for his life."

"The first," said the old woman, "is, that he may choose the place
where the gallows shall be erected; the second, that he may fix the
hour of his execution; and the third favour is, that you will not fail
to be present."

"I grant all three," said the judge. But when he learned that the
criminal had chosen a certain hill on the downs for the place of
execution, and an hour before midnight for the time, he sent to beg
the sheriff to bear him company on this important occasion.

The sheriff placed himself at the judge's disposal, but he commanded
the attendance of the gaoler as some sort of protection; and the
gaoler, for his part, implored his reverence the chaplain to be of the
party, as the hill was not in good spiritual repute. So, when the time
came, the four started together, and the hangman and the farmer's son
went before them to the foot of the gallows.

Just as the rope was being prepared, the farmer'a son called to the
judge, and said, "If your Honour will walk twenty paces down the hill,
to where you will see a bit of paper, you will learn the fate of the
fiddler."

"That is, no doubt, a copy of the poor man's last confession," thought
the judge.

"Murder will out, Mr. Sheriff," said he; and in the interests of truth
and justice he hastened to pick up the paper.

But the farmer's son had dropped it as he came along, by his mother's
direction, in such a place that the judge could not pick it up without
putting his foot on the edge of the fairy ring. No sooner had he done
so than he perceived an innumerable company of little people dressed
in green cloaks and hoods, who were dancing round in a circle as wide
as the ring itself.

They were all about two feet high, and had aged faces, brown and
withered, like the knots on gnarled trees in hedge bottoms, and they
squinted horribly; but, in spite of their seeming age, they flew round
and round like children.

"Mr. Sheriff! Mr. Sheriff!" cried the judge, "come and see the
dancing. And hear the music, too, which is so lively that it makes the
sole