Still the children stared at him--from his dark-blue cap, like a big
columbine flower, to his bare, hairy feet. At last he laughed.

'Please don't look like that. It isn't my fault. What else could you
expect?' he said.

'We didn't expect any one,' Dan answered, slowly. 'This is our field.'

'Is it?' said their visitor, sitting down. 'Then what on Human Earth
made you act _Midsummer Night's Dream_ three times over, _on_ Midsummer
Eve, _in_ the middle of a Ring, and under--right _under_ one of my
oldest hills in Old England? Pook's Hill--Puck's Hill--Puck's
Hill--Pook's Hill! It's as plain as the nose on my face.'

He pointed to the bare, fern-covered slope of Pook's Hill that runs up
from the far side of the mill-stream to a dark wood. Beyond that wood
the ground rises and rises for five hundred feet, till at last you climb
out on the bare top of Beacon Hill, to look over the Pevensey Levels and
the Channel and half the naked South Downs.

'By Oak, Ash, and Thorn!' he cried, still laughing. 'If this had
happened a few hundred years ago you'd have had all the People of the
Hills out like bees in June!'

'We didn't know it was wrong,' said Dan.

'Wrong!' The little fellow shook with laughter. 'Indeed, it isn't wrong.
You've done something that Kings and Knights and Scholars in old days
would have given their crowns and spurs and books to find out. If Merlin