that is all any sort of money is good for; I wish all the coins were made
into buttons for little Guido."

"Where is it?" said Guido.

"I can't exactly tell where it is," said the Wheat. "It was very near me
once, and I thought the next thunder's rain would wash it down into the
streamlet--it has been here ever so long, it came here first just after
the oak the lightning split died. And it has been rolled about by the
ploughs ever since, and no one has ever seen it; I thought it must go
into the ditch at last, but when the men came to hoe one of them knocked
it back, and then another kicked it along--it was covered with earth--and
then, one day, a rook came and split the clod open with his bill, and
pushed the pieces first one side and then the other, and the coin went
one way, but I did not see; I must ask a humble-bee, or a mouse, or a
mole, or some one who knows more about it. It is very thin, so that if
the rook's bill had struck it, his strong bill would have made a dint in
it, and there is, I think, a ship marked on it."

"Oh, I must have it! A ship! Ask a humble-bee directly; be quick!"

Bang! There was a loud report, a gun had gone off in the copse.

"That's my papa," shouted Guido. "I'm sure that was my papa's gun!" Up he
jumped, and getting down the ditch, stepped across the water, and,
seizing a hazel-bough to help himself, climbed up the bank. At the top he
slipped through the fence by the oak and so into the copse. He was in
such a hurry he did not mind the thistles or the boughs that whipped him
as they sprang back, he scrambled through, meeting the vapour of the
gunpowder and the smell of sulphur. In a minute he found a green path,