country where trees bud, or flowers
bloom, that I will not cry in before the year goes round. Give me
another slice of bread to keep me on my journey, and tell me what gift I
shall bring you at the end of the twelve months."

Scrub would have been angry with his brother for cutting so large a
slice, their store of barley meal being low; but his mind was so taken
up with what present it would be best for him to ask. At length a lucky
thought struck him.

"Good Master Cuckoo," said he, "if a great traveller who sees all the
world like you, could know of any place where diamonds or pearls were
to be found, one of a fairly large size brought in your beak would help
such poor men as my brother and me to get something better than barley
bread to give you the next time you come."

"I know nothing of diamonds or pearls," said the cuckoo. "They are in
the hearts of rocks and the sands of rivers. I know only of that which
grows on the earth. But there are two trees close by the well that lies
at the end of the world. One of them is called the golden tree, for its
leaves are all of beaten gold. Every winter they fall into the well with
a sound like that of scattered gold, and I know not what becomes of
them. As for the other, it is always green, like a laurel. Some call it
the wise, and some the merry tree. Its leaves never fall but they that
get one of them keep a cheerful heart in spite of all troubles, and can
make themselves as merry in a hut as in a palace."

"Good Master Cuckoo, bring me a leaf off that tree!" cried Spare.

"Now, brother, don't be a fool!" said Scrub. "Think of the leaves of
gold. Dear Master Cuckoo, bring me one of them!"

Before another word could be said, the cuckoo had flown out of the open
door, and was shouting its spring cry over moor and meadow.

The brothers were poorer than ever that year. Nobody sent them a single
shoe to mend. The new cobbler said, in scorn, they should come over and
work for him. Scrub and Spare would have left the village but for their
barley field, their cabbage garden, and a maid called Fairfeather, whom
both the cobblers had courted for seven years without even knowing whom
she meant to favour.

Sometimes Fairfeather seemed to favour Scrub, sometimes she smiled on
Spare; but the brothers were always friends and did not quarrel. They
sowed their barley, planted their cabbage, and, now that their trade was
gone, worked in the fields of some of the rich villagers to ma