e and more; on every side there was heather instead of
violets and anemones. None of the young trees grew up, the bushes
withered, the old trees began to die in their tops, and it was a
general calamity.

"It's no longer at all pleasant in the wood," said the nightingale. "I
think I shall build somewhere else."

"Why, there's hardly a decent tree left to live in!" said the crow.

"The ground has become so hard that it's no longer possible to dig one's
self a proper hole and burrow," said the fox.

The wood was at her wits' end. The beech stretched his branches to the
sky in an appeal for help and the oak wrung his in silent despair.

"Sing your song once more!" said the heath.

"I have forgotten it," replied the wood, gloomily. "And my flowers are
withered and my birds have flown away."

"Then I will sing," said the heath.

[Illustration]

And he sang:

"A goodly song round the moorland goes
When the sun in the east leaps clearer;
And like blood or fire the heather glows
As to autumn the woods draw nearer.

"All day on the moor will the cotton-grass
Weave its white, long bands together;
And softly the snake and the adder pass
Through the stems of the tufted heather.

"On swinging tussock the lapwing leaps,
Lark's note above plover's swelling,
As the crook-backed cotter in silence creeps
From his lonely moorland dwelling."

4

Gradually, as the years passed, things looked worse and worse for the
wood. The heath spread farther and farther, until it reached the other
end of the wood. The great trees died and toppled down as soon as the
storm took a fair hold of them: then they lay and rotted and the heather
grew over them. There were now only half a score of the oldest and
strongest trees left; but they were altogether hollow and had quite thin
tops.

"My time is over, I must die," said the wood.

"Well, I told you so beforehand," replied the heath.

But then the men and women began to grow very frightened at the way the
heather was using the wood:

"Where am I to get timber for my workshop?" cried the joiner.

"Where am I to get sticks to put under my pot?" screamed the goodwife.

"Where, oh where, are we to get fuel in the winter?" sighed the old
man.

"Where am I to stroll with my sweetheart in the spring?" asked the young
one.

Then, when they had looked at the poor old trees for a bit, to see if
there was anything to be done with them, they took th