haven't got into Fairyland
You're not in Lewes Gaol.'

All night long they thought of it,
And, come the dawn, they saw
They'd tumbled into a great old pit,
At the bottom of Minepit Shaw.

And the keepers' hound had followed 'em close
And broke her neck in the fall;
So they picked up their knives and their crossbows
And buried the dog. That's all.

But whether the man was a poacher too
Or a Pharisee so bold--
I reckon there's more things told than are true,
And more things true than are told.

The Tree of Justice

It was a warm, dark winter day with the Sou'-West wind singing through
Dallington Forest, and the woods below the Beacon. The children set out
after dinner to find old Hobden, who had a three months' job in the
Rough at the back of Pound's Wood. He had promised to get them a
dormouse in its nest. The bright leaf still clung to the beech coppice;
the long chestnut leaves lay orange on the ground, and the rides were
speckled with scarlet-lipped sprouting acorns. They worked their way by
their own short cuts to the edge of Pound's Wood, and heard a horse's
feet just as they came to the beech where Ridley the keeper hangs up the
vermin. The poor little fluffy bodies dangled from the branches--some
perfectly good, but most of them dried to twisted strips.

'Three more owls,' said Dan, counting. 'Two stoats, four jays, and a
kestrel. That's ten since last week. Ridley's a beast.'

'In my time this sort of tree bore heavier fruit.' Sir Richard
Dalyngridge[7] reined up his grey horse, Swallow, in the ride behind
them. 'What play do you make?' he asked.

[7] This is the Norman knight they met the year before in _Puck of
Pook's Hill_. See 'Young Men at the Manor,' 'The Knights of the Joyous
Venture,' and 'Old Men at Pevensey,' in that book.

'Nothing, sir. We're looking for old Hobden,' Dan replied. 'He promised
to get us a sleeper.'

'Sleeper? A _dormeuse_ do you say?'

'Yes, a dormouse, sir.'

'I understand. I passed a woodman on the low grounds. Come!'

He wheeled up the ride again, and pointed through an opening to the
patch of beech-stubs, chestnut, hazel, and birch that old Hobden would
turn into firewood, hop-poles, pea-boughs, and house-faggots before
spring. The old man was as busy as a beaver.

Something laughed beneath a thorn, and Puck stole out, his finger on his
lip.

'Look!' he whispered. 'Along between the spi