out. "So you have lost your
cap, neighbour? Then you will never be able to find the fairies." For
he did not know that Little Toonie, who wore no cap on his head, carried
his capful of moonshine safe underneath his skull, where it had been
since the hour of his birth.

The little elderly man slipped from his side, disappearing suddenly
among the bushes, and Toonie went on alone. So presently he was more
than halfway up the ascent, and could see along the foot-track of the
thicket the silver moonlight lying out over the open ahead.

He had nearly reached to the top of the hill, when up from the ground
sprang the little elderly man, and began beating him across the face
with a hazel wand. Toonie thought surely this must be some carter or
ploughman beating him to make him go faster; so he made haste to get on
and be rid of the blows.

Then, all of a sudden, the little elderly man threw away his hazel
stick, and fell down, clutching at Little Toonie's ankles, whining and
praying him not to go on.

"Now that I have failed to keep you from coming," he cried, "my masters
will put me to death for it! I am a dead man, I tell you, if you go
another step!"

Toonie could not understand what the old fellow meant, and he could not
speak to him. But the poor creature clung to his feet, holding them to
prevent him from taking another step; so Toonie just stooped down,
and (for he was so little and light) picked him up by the scruff, and
carried him by his waistband, so that his arms and legs trailed together
along the ground.

In the open moonlight ahead little people were all agog; bright dewdrops
were shivering down like rain, where flying feet alighted--shot from
bent grass-blades like arrows from a drawn bow. Tight, panting little
bodies, of which one could count the ribs, and faces flushed with fiery
green blood, sprang everywhere. But at Toonie's coming one cried up
shriller than a bat; and at once rippling burrows went this way and that
in the long grass, and stillness followed after.

The poor, dangling old man, whom Toonie was still carrying, wriggled and
whined miserably, crying, "Come back, masters, for it is no use--this
one sees you! He has got past me and all my poor skill to stop him. Set
me free, for you see I am too old to keep the door for you any longer!"

Out buzzed the fairies, hot and angry as a swarm of bees. They came
and fastened upon the unhappy old man, and began pulling him. "To the
ant-hills!" th