14 THE FAIRIES^ GREEN 



was not without a reason that she laid them on 

 opposite sides of the green, for by thus separat- 

 ing them she hoped that at least one might 

 escape detection in the event of a visit from an 

 enemy. 



On collecting himself after his strange ex- 

 perience, the jack sat and listened to the music 

 of the water, whilst through an opening in the 

 rushes his eyes scanned the green, whose close 

 velvety sward seemed to cry aloud to be gam- 

 bolled on. There, so the country people aver, 

 the fairies forgather to hold high revel on the 

 inviting turf, tripping to the tinkling of the falls, 

 in the dark-green ring lighted by innumerable 

 glow-worms. No little folk appeared that night, 

 however ; nothing in fact came near until the 

 hare returned to attend to her young, before 

 vanishing like the wraith she seemed and 

 ensconcing herself in some brambles on the 

 lip of the green. 



She had not been there long when a magpie 

 left his resting-place in the hawthorn overhanging 

 the turf and stood preening his feathers on the 

 topmost spray. Presently, his quick eyes noted 

 the marks left by the hare's pads on the dewy 

 surface, and examined them searchingly as if to 

 learn the identity of the trespasser. He imagined 

 that a badger or a fox had made them ; the 



