take me very long to find Rufus's Stone, but he would not
advise me to do it. I replied that I wouldn't ask him to advise, if he'd
point out the road, and probably I should only venture a little way. He
was a nice man, so he went out in front of the hotel to point, and lent
me a puppy as a companion.

The puppy was no respecter of persons. All he cared for was a walk, so
he kindly consented to take me with him, gambolling ahead as if he knew
where I wanted to go. That tempted me on, and the way wasn't hard to
find, for the puppy or for me. We played into each other's paws, and
when I was lost he found me, or vice versa. The first thing I knew,
there was the Stone. Nobody could mistake it, even from a distance; and
going down to it from the top of a hill, it was still light enough to
read the inscription.

This was my first entrance into the heart of fairyland.

William Rufus couldn't have chosen a more ideal spot to die in, if he'd
picked it out himself from a list of a hundred others; and the evening
silence under the great, gray beeches seemed as if it had lasted a
thousand years, always the same, old and wise as Mother Earth. Then,
suddenly, it was broken by the rustle and stir of a cock pheasant, which
appeared from somewhere as if by magic, and stood for an instant all
kingly, his breast blazing with jewelled orders in the sunset. Me he
regarded with the haughty defiance of a Norman prince, and screamed with
rage at the puppy, all his theories upset, because he had been so
positive the world was entirely his. So it was, if he'd only stopped to
let me assure him that he owned all the best things in it; but he
whirred and soared; and thus I realized instantly that he was a fairy in
disguise. How stupid of me not to have guessed while he was there!

[Illustration: "_William Rufus couldn't have chosen a more ideal spot to
die in_"]

You know, the New Forest is haunted with fairies, good and bad. There
are the "malfays" that came because of William the Conqueror's cruelty
in driving away the peasants to make the great deer-forest for his
hunting; and there are the good fays that help the cottage housewives,
and the "tricksies" that frighten the wild ponies and pinch the cattle.
I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that that pheasant was Puck
himself, for no doubt Puck has a hunting-lodge somewhere in the New
Forest.

I meant to sit by the Stone only five minutes, but the fairies put a
spell upon my five minute