he fairest swineherds that ever came
this way. Choose whether you will go home and keep hogs for Hardhold and
Drypenny, or live in the free forest with me."

"We will stay with you," said the children, "for we do not like keeping
swine. Besides, our fathers went through this forest, and we may meet
them some day coming home."

While they spoke, the lady slipped her holly branch through the ivy, as
if it had been a key,--soon a door opened in the oak, and there was a
fair house. The windows were of rock crystal, but they could not be seen
from without. The walls and floors were covered with thick green moss,
as soft as velvet. There were low seats and a round table, vessels of
carved wood, a hearth inlaid with strange stones, an oven, and a
storeroom for food against the winter.

When they stepped in, the lady said: "A hundred years have I lived here,
and my name is Lady Greensleeves. No friend or servant have I except my
dwarf Corner, who comes to me at the end of harvest with his handmill,
his basket, and his axe. With these he grinds the nuts, and gathers the
berries, and splits the firewood; and cheerily we live all the winter.
But Corner loves the frost and fears the sun; and when the topmost
branches begin to bud, he returns to his country far in the north, so I
am lonely in the summertime."

By these words the children saw how welcome they were. Lady Greensleeves
gave them deer's milk and cakes of nut-flour, and soft green moss to
sleep on. And they forgot all their troubles, the wicked stewards, and
the straying swine.

Early in the morning a troop of does came to be milked, fairies brought
flowers, and birds brought berries, to show Lady Greensleeves what had
bloomed and ripened. She taught the children to make cheese of the does'
milk, and wine of the woodberries. She showed them the stores of honey
which wild bees had made, and left in the hollow trees, the rarest
plants of the forest, and the herbs that made all the creatures tame.

All that summer Woodwender and Loveleaves lived with her in the great
oak tree, free from toil and care. The children would have been happy,
but they could hear no news of their fathers. At last the leaves began
to fade, and the flowers to fall. Lady Greensleeves said that Corner was
coming. One moonlight night she heaped sticks on the fire, and set her
door open, when Woodwender and Loveleaves were going to sleep, saying
she expected some friends to tell her the news of the