e rain is made, and the _awful_ big
windmills up there where the wind blows from, and the cannons that bum
the thunder down."

"Could they----?" began Duke, timidly, and then he stopped.

"Could they what?" said Hoodie, rather snappishly. "If peoples
interrumpt, I wish they'd finish their interrumpting, and not stop in
the middle."

[Illustration: "If peoples interrumpt, I wish they'd finish their
interrumpting, and not stop in the middle."]

"I didn't like to say it," said Duke. "I only wanted to know if they
could see right into the middle of the sky where the angels are."

"No," said Hoodie, decidedly, "they couldn't. They was goblins; they
wasn't angels at all, so they didn't want to see angels. It isn't that
kind of story, Duke--I'll tell you one like that another day--Sunday
perhaps. Now I want to go on about the goblins. What they liked best was
to peep into the windows and look at people, and play them tricks
sometimes. They was awful fond of playing tricks; goblins always is. But
sometimes they gets tricks played them, and that's what my story's
about. There was a window up in a house that they wanted to look in at,
but they couldn't ever get quite high enough up, 'cos the window was at
the top of the house, you see. It was the window of a witch, but the
goblins didn't know that. She was a witch that lived all alone, and
there wasn't anything she cared for except playing tricks, she was
always playing tricks. She knowed the goblins wanted to peep in at her
window, she knowed everything, 'cos that's what it means to be a witch,
that and playing tricks. And she set herself to play a trick on the
goblins--a reg'lar good trick, 'cos she didn't see what they was always
wanting to peep in at her window for."

Hoodie paused for a moment to take breath.

"I _wonder_ what the trick was," whispered Duke and Hec under their
breath, evidently very much impressed.

"Yes, you may wonder," said Hoodie, majestically. "You'd never guess.
Not in a milliond guesses. Well then, one night when the goblins was
twisting and turning theirselves about on the very edge of the star,
trying to peep in at the window, all of a suddent the witch's house
turned right round, so that the window came to the side instead of up at
the top, and one of the goblins gave a great jump and screamed out to
the other--

"'I say, brother, we can see into the witch's house now.'"

"But you said the goblins didn't know it was a witch that lived t