I'll save you where you stand!'
They laid their crossbows on the bank,
They threw their knives in the wood,
And the ground before them opened and sank
And saved 'em where they stood.
'Oh, what's the roaring in our ears
That strikes us well-nigh dumb?'
'Oh, that is just how things appears
According as they come.'

'What are the stars before our eyes
That strike us well-nigh blind?'
'Oh, that is just how things arise
According as you find.'

'And why's our bed so hard to the bones
Excepting where it's cold?'
'Oh, that's because it is precious stones
Excepting where 'tis gold.

'Think it over as you stand
For I tell you without fail,
If you 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 cross-bows
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 reined up his grey horse, Swallow, in the ride behind them.
[This is the Norman knight they met the year befor