Wood Magic: A Fable
or column, three stories one above the other, and it had been taken from
the willow tree by the brook, the huge hollow willow which he had twice
tried to chop down, that he might make a boat of it. Then out of doors,
and up the yard, and past the cart-house, when something moved in the
long grass under the wall. It was a weasel, caught in a gin.
The trap had been set by the side of a drain for rats, and the weasel
coming out, or perhaps frightened by footsteps, and hastening
carelessly, had been trapped. Bevis, biting his apple, looked at the
weasel, and the weasel said: "Sir Bevis, please let me out, this gin
hurts me so; the teeth are very sharp and the spring is very strong, and
the tar-cord is very stout, so that I cannot break it. See how the iron
has skinned my leg and taken off the fur, and I am in such pain. Do
please let me go, before the ploughboy comes, or he will hit me with a
stick, or smash me with a stone, or put his iron-shod heel on me; and I
have been a very good weasel, Bevis. I have been catching the horrid
rats that eat the barley-meal put for the pigs. Oh, let me out, the gin
hurts me so!"
Bevis put his foot on the spring, and was pressing it down, and the
weasel thought he was already free, and looked across at the wood pile
under which he meant to hide, when Bevis heard a little squeak close to
his head, and looked up and saw a mouse under the eaves of the
cart-house, peeping forth from a tiny crevice, where the mortar had
fallen from between the stones of the wall.
"Bevis, Bevis!" said the mouse, "don't you do it--don't you let that
weasel go! He is a most dreadful wicked weasel, and his teeth are ever
so much sharper than that gin. He does not kill the rats, because he is
afraid of them (unless he can assassinate one in his sleep), but he
murdered my wife and sucked her blood, and her body, all dry and
withered, is up in the beam there, if you will get a ladder and look.
And he killed all my little mouses, and made me very unhappy, and I
shall never be able to get another wife to live with me in this
cart-house while he is about. There is no way we can get away from him.
If we go out into the field he follows us there, and if we go into the
sheds he comes after us there, and he is a cruel beast, that wicked
weasel. You know you ate the partridge's eggs," added the mouse,
speaking to the weasel.
"It is all false," said the weasel. "But it is true that you ate the
wheat out of the ears in the wheat-rick, and you know what was the
consequence. If that little bit of wheat you ate had been thrashed, and
ground, and baked, and made into bread, then that poor girl would have
had a crust to eat, and would not have jumped into the river, and she
would have had a son, and he would have been a great man and fought
battles, just as Bevis does with his brazen cannon, and won great
victories, and been the pride of all the nation. But you ate those
particular grains of wheat that were meant to do all this, you wicked
little mouse. Besides which, you ran across the bed one night, and
frightened Bevis's mother."
"But I did not mean to," said the mouse; "and you did mean to kill my
wife, and you ate the partridge's eggs."
"And a very good thing I did," said the weasel. "Do you know what would
have happened, if I had not taken them? I did it all for good, and with
the best intentions. For if I had left the eggs one more day, there was
a man who meant to have stolen them all but one, which he meant to have
left to deceive the keeper. If he had stolen them, he would have been
caught, for the keeper was watching for him all the time, and he would
have been put to prison, and his children would have been hungry. So I
ate the eggs, and especially I ate every bit of the one the man meant to
have left."
"And why were you so particular about eating that egg?" asked Bevis.
"Because," said the weasel, "if that egg had come to a partridge chick,
and the chick had lived till the shooting-time came, then the sportsman
and his brother, when they came round, would have started it out of the
stubble, and the shot from the gun of the younger would have
accidentally killed the elder, and people would have thought it was done
to murder him for the sake of the inheritance."
"Now, is this true?" said Bevis.
"Yes, that it is; and I killed the mouse's wife also for the best of
reasons."
"You horrid wretch!" cried the mouse.
"Oh, you needn't call me a wretch," said the weasel; "I am sure you
ought to be grateful to me, for your wife was very jealous because you
paid so much attention to the Miss Mouse you want to marry now, and in
the night she meant to have gnawn your throat."
"And you frightened my mother," said Bevis, "by running across her bed
in the night;" and he began to press on the spring of the gin.
"Yes, that he did," said the weasel, overjoyed; "and he made a hole in
the boards of the floor, and it was down that hole that the
half-sovereign rolled and was lost, and the poor maid-servant sent away
because they thought she had stolen it."
"What do you say to that?" asked Bevis.
But the mouse was quite aghast and dumb-founded and began to think that
it was he after all who was in the wrong, so that for the moment he
could not speak. Just then Bevis caught sight of the colt that had come
up beside his mother, the cart mare, to the fence; and thinking that he
would go and try and stroke the pretty creature, Bevis started forward,
forgetting all about the weasel and the mouse. As he started, he pressed
the spring down, and in an instant the weasel was out, and had hobbled
across to the wood pile. When the mouse saw this, he gave a little
squeak of terror, and ran back to his hiding-place.
But when Bevis put out his hand to stroke the colt, the colt started
back, so he picked up a stick and threw it at him. Then he took another
stick and hunted the hens round and round the ricks to make them lay
their eggs faster, as it is well known that is the best way. For he
remembered that last year they had shown him three tiny bantam chicks,
such darling little things, all cuddled cosily together in the hollow of
a silver table-spoon. The hens clucked and raced, and Bevis raced after
and shouted, and the cock, slipping on one side, for it hurt his
dignity to run away like the rest, hopped upon the railings, napped his
wings, crew, and cried: "You'll be glad when I'm dead". That was how
Bevis translated his "hurra-ca-roorah".
In the midst of the noise out came Polly, the dairy-maid, with a bone
for Pan, which Bevis no sooner saw, than he asked her to let him give
Pan his dinner. "Very well, dear," said Polly, and went in to finish her
work. So Bevis took the bone, and Pan, all weary and sore from his
thrashing, crept out from his tub to receive it; but Bevis put the bone
on the grass (all the grass was worn bare where Pan could reach) just
where the spaniel could smell it nicely but could not get it. Pan
struggled, and scratched, and howled, and scratched again, and tugged
till his collar, buckled tightly now, choked him, and he gasped and
panted, while Bevis, taking the remnant of his apple from his pocket,
nibbled it and laughed with a face like an angel's for sweetness.
Then a rook went over and cawed, and Bevis, looking up at the bird,
caught a glimpse of the swing over the wall--it stood under the sycamore
tree. Dropping the bit of apple, away he ran to the swing, and sat in
it, and pushed himself off. As he swung forward he straightened his legs
and leant back; when he swung back he drew his feet under him and leant
forward, and by continuing this the weight of his body caused the swing
to rise like a pendulum till he went up among the sycamore boughs,
nearly as high as the ivy-grown roof of the summer-house, just
opposite. There he went to and fro, as easily as possible, shutting his
eyes and humming to himself.
Presently a cock chaffinch came and perched in the ash close by, and
immediately began to sing his war-song: "I am lord of this tree," sang
the chaffinch, "I am lord of this tree; every bough is mine, and every
leaf, and the wind that comes through it, and the sunshine that falls on
it, and the rain that moistens it, and the blue sky over it, and the
grass underneath it--all this is mine. My nest is going to be made in
the ivy that grows half-way up the trunk, and my wife is very busy
to-day bringing home the fibres and the moss, and I have just come back
a little while to tell you all that none of you must come into or touch
my tree. I like this tree, and therefore it is mine. Be careful that
none of you come inside the shadow of it, or I shall peck you with all
my might."
Then he paused awhile, and Bevis went on swinging and listening. In a
minute or two another chaffinch came to the elm in the hedge just
outside the garden, and quite close to the ash. Directly he perched, he
ruffled up and began to sing too: "I am lord of this tree, and it is a
very high tree, much higher than the ash, and even above the oak where
that slow fellow the crow is building. Mine is the very highest tree of
all, and I am the brightest and prettiest of all the chaffinches. See my
colours how bright they are, so that you would hardly know me from a
bullfinch. There is not a feather rumpled in my wing, or my tail, and I
have the most beautiful eyes of all of you."
Hardly had he done singing than another chaffinch came into the
crab-tree, a short way up the hedge, and he began to sing too: "I have a
much bigger tree than either of you, but as it is at the top of the
field I cannot bring it down here, but I have come down into this
crab-tree, and I say it is mine, and I am lord of two trees. I am
stronger than both of you, and neither of you dare come near me."
The two other chaffinches were silent for a minute, and then one of
them, the knight of the ash-tree, flew down into the hedge under the
crab-tree; and instantly down flew the third chaffinch, and they fought
a battle, and pecked and buffeted one another with their wings, till
Bevis's tears ran down with laughing. Presently they parted, and the
third chaffinch went home to his tree at the top of the field, leaving
one little feather on the ground, which the first chaffinch picked up
and carried to his nest in the ash.
But scarcely had he woven it into the nest than down flew the second
chaffinch from the elm into the shadow of the ash. Flutter, flutter went
the first chaffinch to meet him, and they had such a battle as Bevis had
never seen before, and fought till they were tired; then each flew up
into his tree, and sang again about their valour.
Immediately afterwards ten sparrows came from the house-top into the
bushes, chattering and struggling all together, scratching, pecking,
buffeting, and all talking at once. After they had had a good fight
they all went back to the house-top, and began to tell each other what
tremendous blows they had given. Then there was such a great cawing from
the rook trees, which were a long way off, that it was evident a battle
was going on there, and Bevis heard the chaffinch say that one of the
rooks had been caught stealing his cousin's sticks.
Next two goldfinches began to fight, and then a blackbird came up from
the brook and perched on a rail, and he was such a boaster, for he said
he had the yellowest bill of all the blackbirds, and the blackest coat,
and the largest eye, and the sweetest whistle, and he was lord over all
the blackbirds. In two minutes up came another one from out of the
bramble bushes at the corner, and away they went chattering at each
other. Presently the starlings on the chimney began to quarrel, and had
a terrible set-to. Then a wren came by, and though he was so small, his
boast was worse than the blackbird's, for he said he was the sharpest