e cool black night, and right into the fresh-scented pinky
pearly dawning. And when it was real live wide-awake morning, Diggory
felt very thin and empty inside his smock, and he remembered that he had
had nothing to eat since dinner-time yesterday, and then it was pork and
greens.

He rode on, and he rode on, and by-and-by he came to a red brick wall,
very strong and stout, with big buttresses and a stone coping. His horse
(whom he had christened Invicta, and perhaps if he had known as much
Latin as you do he would have called him something different) was a
very high horse indeed, and by standing up in his stirrups Diggory could
see over the wall. And he saw that on the other side was an orchard full
of trees full of apples, red, and yellow, and green. He reined Invicta
in close under the wall and said, 'Woa, there! stand still, will 'e?'
And he stood up on the broad saddle and made a jump and caught at the
stone coping of the wall, and next moment he had hung by his hands and
dropped into the orchard. And it was a very long drop indeed. For he had
quite made up his mind to take some of the apples. First, because he was
hungry, and, secondly, because boys _will_ take apples--in stories that
is, of course; _really_, they would never think of such a thing.

With a practised eye, Diggory chose the tree with the fattest, rosiest
apples on it. He climbed the tree, and had just settled himself astride
a convenient bough when he heard a voice say: 'Hi! You up there!'

And, looking down, he saw a flat-faced old man with a red flannel
waistcoat standing under the tree looking up spitefully.

'Good-morning, my fine fellow,' said the old man. 'You seem a nice
honest lad, and I'm sorry for your sake that apple stealing's punished
so severely in these parts.'

'I've not had any apples yet,' said Diggory. 'Look here, I'll go away if
you like, and we'll say no more about it.'

'That's a handsome offer, very,' said the nasty old man; 'but this is an
enchanted orchard, and you can't go away without with your leave or by
your leave, as you came in. Why, you can't even get out of the tree--and
as for climbing the wall, no one can do it without a white horse to help
him. So now where are you?'

Diggory knew very well where he was, and he tried at once to be
somewhere else, but the old man was right. He could move all about the
tree from branch to branch, but the tree felt wrong way up and he felt
wrong way up; that is to say, he co