you not ask her to come out
and meet me?"

"Of course I will," cried Old Pipes; "and I will do it without
delay."

And then, the Dryad by his side, he hurried to his cottage. But when
he mentioned the matter to his mother, the old woman became very
angry indeed. She did not believe in Dryads; and, if they really did
exist, she knew they must be witches and sorceresses, and she would
have nothing to do with them. If her son had ever allowed himself to
be kissed by one of them, he ought to be ashamed of himself. As to
its doing him the least bit of good, she did not believe a word of
it. He felt better than he used to feel, but that was very common;
she had sometimes felt that way herself. And she forbade him ever to
mention a Dryad to her again.

That afternoon Old Pipes, feeling very sad that his plan in regard
to his mother had failed, sat down upon the rock and played upon his
pipes. The pleasant sounds went down the valley and up the hills and
mountain, but, to the great surprise of some persons who happened to
notice the fact, the notes were not echoed back from the rocky
hillside, but from the woods on the side of the valley on which Old
Pipes lived. The next day many of the villagers stopped in their
work to listen to the echo of the pipes coming from the woods. The
sound was not as clear and strong as it used to be when it was sent
back from the rocky hillside, but it certainly came from among the
trees. Such a thing as an echo changing its place in this way had
never been heard of before, and nobody was able to explain how it
could have happened. Old Pipes, however, knew very well that the
sound came from the Echo-dwarf shut up in the great oak-tree. The
sides of the tree were thin, and the sound of the pipes could be
heard through them, and the dwarf was obliged by the laws of his
being to echo back those notes whenever they came to him. But Old
Pipes thought he might get the Dryad in trouble if he let any one
know that the Echo-dwarf was shut up in the tree, and so he wisely
said nothing about it.

One day the two boys and the girl who had helped Old Pipes up the
hill were playing in the woods. Stopping near the great oak-tree,
they heard a sound of knocking within it, and then a voice plainly
said:

"Let me out! let me out!"

For a moment the children stood still in astonishment, and then one
of the boys exclaimed:

"Oh, it is a Dryad, like the one Old Pipes found! Let's let her
out!"

"What ar