hands.

'We always said, Dan and I,' Una stammered, 'that if it ever happened we'd
know ex-actly what to do; but--but now it seems all different somehow.'

'She means meeting a fairy,' said Dan. '_I_ never believed in 'em--not
after I was six, anyhow.'

'I did,' said Una. 'At least, I sort of half believed till we learned
"Farewell Rewards." Do you know "Farewell Rewards and Fairies"?'

'Do you mean this?' said Puck. He threw his big head back and began at the
second line:--

'Good housewives now may say,
For now foul sluts in dairies
Do fare as well as they;
For though they sweep their hearths no less

('Join in, Una!')

Than maids were wont to do,
Yet who of late for cleanliness
Finds sixpence in her shoe?'

The echoes flapped all along the flat meadow.

'Of course I know it,' he said.

'And then there's the verse about the Rings,' said Dan. 'When I was little
it always made me feel unhappy in my inside.'

'"Witness those rings and roundelays," do you mean?' boomed Puck, with a
voice like a great church organ.

'Of theirs which yet remain,
Were footed in Queen Mary's days
On many a grassy plain.
But since of late Elizabeth,
And later James came in,
Are never seen on any heath
As when the time hath been.

'It's some time since I heard that sung, but there's no good beating about
the bush: it's true. The People of the Hills have all left. I saw them
come into Old England and I saw them go. Giants, trolls, kelpies,
brownies, goblins, imps; wood, tree, mound, and water spirits;
heath-people, hill-watchers, treasure-guards, good people, little people,
pishogues, leprechauns, night-riders, pixies, nixies, gnomes and the
rest--gone, all gone! I came into England with Oak, Ash, and Thorn, and
when Oak, Ash, and Thorn are gone I shall go too.'

Dan looked round the meadow--at Una's oak by the lower gate, at the line of
ash trees that overhang Otter Pool where the mill-stream spills over when
the mill does not need it, and at the gnarled old white-thorn where Three
Cows scratched their necks.

'It's all right,' he said; and added, 'I'm planting a lot of acorns this
autumn too.'

'Then aren't you most awfully old?' said Una.

'Not old--fairly long-lived, as folk say hereabouts. Let me see--my friends
used to set my dish of cream for me o' nights when Stonehenge was new.
Yes, before the Flint Men made the Dewpond under Chanctonbury Ring.'

Una clasped her ha