and feel like us, you will never, never be happy. Lie still, dear; the
shadow of the oak is broad and will not move from you for a long time
yet."

"But perhaps Paul will come up to my house, and Percy and Morna."

"Look up in the oak very quietly, don't move, just open your eyes and
look," said the Wheat, who was very cunning. Guido looked and saw a
lovely little bird climbing up a branch. It was chequered, black and
white, like a very small magpie, only without such a long tail, and it
had a spot of red about its neck. It was a pied woodpecker, not the large
green woodpecker, but another kind. Guido saw it go round the branch, and
then some way up, and round again till it came to a place that pleased
it, and then the woodpecker struck the bark with its bill, tap-tap. The
sound was quite loud, ever so much more noise than such a tiny bill
seemed able to make. Tap-tap! If Guido had not been still so that the
bird had come close he would never have found it among the leaves.
Tap-tap! After it had picked out all the insects there, the woodpecker
flew away over the ashpoles of the copse.

"I should just like to stroke him," said Guido. "If I climbed up into the
oak perhaps he would come again, and I could catch him."

"No," said the Wheat, "he only comes once a day,"

"Then tell me stories," said Guido, imperiously.

"I will if I can," said the Wheat. "Once upon a time, when the oak the
lightning struck was still living, and when the wheat was green in this
very field, a man came staggering out of the wood, and walked out into