its own cry to let them
know that at last the spring had come.

"Now," said the bird, "I am going on my travels over the world to tell
men of the spring. There is no country where trees bud or flowers bloom
that I will not cry in before the year goes round. Give me another slice
of barley bread to keep me on my journey, and tell me what present I
shall bring you at the end of the twelve months."

"Good Master Cuckoo," said Scrub, "a diamond or pearl would help such
poor men as my brother and I to provide something better than barley
bread for your next entertainment."

"I know nothing of diamonds or pearls," said the cuckoo; "they are in
the hearts of rocks and the sands of rivers. My knowledge is only of
that which grows on the earth. But there are two trees hard by the well
that lies at the world's end. One of them is called the golden tree, for
its leaves are all of beaten gold. 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 blithe heart in
spite of all misfortunes, and can make themselves as merry in a poor hut
as in a handsome palace."

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

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

Before another word could be spoken, the cuckoo had flown.

The brothers were poorer than ever that year; nobody would send them a
single shoe to mend. The new cobbler said, in scorn, they should come to
be his apprentices; and 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 more than seven
years.

At the end of the winter Scrub and Spare had grown so poor and ragged
that Fairfeather thought them beneath her notice. Old neighbors forgot
to invite them to wedding feasts or merry-makings; and they thought the
cuckoo had forgotten them, too, when at daybreak, on the first of April,
they heard a hard beak knocking at their door, and a voice crying:

"Cuckoo! cuckoo! Let me in."

Spare ran to open the door, and in came the cuckoo, carrying on one side
of his bill a golden leaf, larger than that of any tree in the North
Country; and in the other, one like that of the common laurel, only it
had a fresher green.

"Here!" it said, giving the gold to Scrub and the