The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories Part 17

But the heath shook his black twigs earnestly:

"You don't know me," he said. "I am stronger than you think. Your trees will never turn green in me. I have bound the earth under me as firm as iron and your roots can't go through it. Just wait till next year! Then the little fellows you are so pleased with will all be dead."

"You're lying," said the wood.

But she was frightened.

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Next year, it happened as the heath had said. The little oaks and beeches died as one tree. And now a terrible time came for the wood. The heath spread more and more; on every side there was heather instead of violets and anemones. None of the young trees grew up, the bushes withered, the old trees began to die in their tops, and it was a general calamity.

"It's no longer at all pleasant in the wood," said the nightingale. "I think I shall build somewhere else."

"Why, there's hardly a decent tree left to live in!" said the crow.

"The ground has become so hard that it's no longer possible to dig one's self a proper hole and burrow," said the fox.

The wood was at her wits' end. The beech stretched his branches to the sky in an appeal for help and the oak wrung his in silent despair.

"Sing your song once more!" said the heath.

"I have forgotten it," replied the wood, gloomily. "And my flowers are withered and my birds have flown away."

"Then I will sing," said the heath.

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And he sang:

"A goodly song round the moorland goes When the sun in the east leaps clearer; And like blood or fire the heather glows As to autumn the woods draw nearer.

"All day on the moor will the cotton-gra.s.s Weave its white, long bands together; And softly the snake and the adder pa.s.s Through the stems of the tufted heather.

"On swinging tussock the lapwing leaps, Lark's note above plover's swelling, As the crook-backed cotter in silence creeps From his lonely moorland dwelling."

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Gradually, as the years pa.s.sed, things looked worse and worse for the wood. The heath spread farther and farther, until it reached the other end of the wood. The great trees died and toppled down as soon as the storm took a fair hold of them: then they lay and rotted and the heather grew over them. There were now only half a score of the oldest and strongest trees left; but they were altogether hollow and had quite thin tops.

"My time is over, I must die," said the wood.

"Well, I told you so beforehand," replied the heath.

But then the men and women began to grow very frightened at the way the heather was using the wood:

"Where am I to get timber for my workshop?" cried the joiner.

"Where am I to get sticks to put under my pot?" screamed the goodwife.

"Where, oh where, are we to get fuel in the winter?" sighed the old man.

"Where am I to stroll with my sweetheart in the spring?" asked the young one.

Then, when they had looked at the poor old trees for a bit, to see if there was anything to be done with them, they took their spades and mattocks and ran up the hills to where the heath began.

"You may as well save yourselves the trouble," said the heath. "I am not to be dug into."

"Alas, no!" sighed the wood; but she was so weak now that no one could hear what she said.

But they did not mind about that. They hewed and hewed right down through the hard sh.e.l.l. Then they carted earth into the holes and manured it; and then they planted some small trees. They tended them and put their faith in them and screened them against the east wind as well as they could.

And, year after year, the small trees grew. They stood like light, green spots in the middle of the black heather; and, when this had gone on for some time, a little bird came and built a nest in one of them.

"Hurrah!" shouted the men. "Now we've got a wood once more."

"No one can hold his own against men," said the heath. "The thing can't be helped. So we'll move on."

But of the old wood there still remained one tree, who had only one green twig in his top. Here a little bird settled and told of the new wood that was growing up on the hill yonder.

"Thank Heaven!" said the old wood. "What one can't do one's self one must leave to the children. If only they're good for something! They look so thin!"

"I daresay you were thin yourself once," said the bird.

The old wood said nothing to this, for at that very moment she was finished; and so, of course, my story is finished too.

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[Ill.u.s.tration: SOMEWHERE IN THE WOOD]

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Somewhere in the wood, quite close to one another, lived a little company of good friends.

There was the sheep's-scabious, who looked as if she had something on her head, but had not, and the bell-flower, who was so blue and modest.

There was the maiden-pink, meeker and redder and gentler than any, and a few blades of gra.s.s, who were nice and green, but poor and quite grateful if one as much as looked at them. Then there was some moss, which grew on the old stump of a tree and kept to itself, and there was the hazel-bush, who was the finest of them all, both because he was so big and, especially, because the linnet had built his nest in him.

The friends never had a word.

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