'Please, father,' Diggory said, 'I want to go out and seek my fortune.'
'Seek your grandmother,' said his father, but not unkindly. He was
smoking a pipe outside his cottage door, and he had a red-spotted
handkerchief over his head because of the flies. There were flies
then, just the same as there are now, though it was a hundred years ago
by the church clock.
'I wasn't thinking of my grandmother,' said Diggory; 'I was thinking of
my Uncle Diggory. He was the third son of a woodcutter, just like I am,
and he saw right enough that that's the sort that _has_ to go out and
seek its fortune. And I'm getting on, father; I shall be twenty before
you know where you are.'
'You'll have to be twenty and more before I agree not to know where
_you_ are,' said his father. 'Your Uncle Diggory did well for himself,
sure enough, and many a turkey and chine he's sent us at
Christmas-time; but he started a-horseback, he did. He got the horse
from _his_ Uncle Diggory, and he was a rover too. Now, if you went,
you'd have to go on Shank's mare, and them that go a-foot comes back
a-foot.'
'Will you let me go, then, if I can get a horse?' said Diggory
coaxingly. 'Do say yes, dad, and then I won't say another word about it
till I've got the horse.'
'Drat the lad--_yes_, then!' shouted the father.
Diggory jumped up from the porch seat.
'Then farewell home and hey for the road,' cried he, 'for I've got the
horse, dad. My Uncle Diggory sent it to me this very day, and it's tied
up behind the lodge; white it is, and a red saddle and bridle fit for a
King.'
The woodcutter grumbled, but he was a woodcutter of honour, and having
said 'Yes,' he had to stick to yes.
So Diggory rode off on the white horse with the scarlet saddle, and all
the village turned out to see him go. He had on his best white smock,
and he had never felt so fine in all his days.
So he rode away. When he came to the round mound windmill he stopped,
for there was Joyce taking in the clean clothes from the hedge, because
it was Monday evening.
He told her where he was going.
'You might take me with you,' she said. 'I'm not so very heavy but what
we could both ride on that great big horse of yours.' And she held up a
face as sweet as a bunch of flowers.
But Diggory said, 'No, my dear. Why, you little silly, girls can't go to
seek their fortunes. You'd only be in my way! Wish me luck, child.'
So he rode on, and she folded up the linen all crooked, and damped it
down with her tears, so that it was quite ready for ironing.
Diggory rode on, and on, and on. He rode through dewy evening, and
through the cool black night, and right into the fresh-scented pinky
pearly dawning. And when it was real live wide-awake morning, Diggory
felt very thin and empty inside his smock, and he remembered that he had
had nothing to eat since dinner-time yesterday, and then it was pork and
greens.
He rode on, and he rode on, and by-and-by he came to a red brick wall,
very strong and stout, with big buttresses and a stone coping. His horse
(whom he had christened Invicta, and perhaps if he had known as much
Latin as you do he would have called him something different) was a
very high horse indeed, and by standing up in his stirrups Diggory could
see over the wall. And he saw that on the other side was an orchard full
of trees full of apples, red, and yellow, and green. He reined Invicta
in close under the wall and said, 'Woa, there! stand still, will 'e?'
And he stood up on the broad saddle and made a jump and caught at the
stone coping of the wall, and next moment he had hung by his hands and
dropped into the orchard. And it was a very long drop indeed. For he had
quite made up his mind to take some of the apples. First, because he was
hungry, and, secondly, because boys _will_ take apples--in stories that
is, of course; _really_, they would never think of such a thing.
With a practised eye, Diggory chose the tree with the fattest, rosiest
apples on it. He climbed the tree, and had just settled himself astride
a convenient bough when he heard a voice say: 'Hi! You up there!'
And, looking down, he saw a flat-faced old man with a red flannel
waistcoat standing under the tree looking up spitefully.
'Good-morning, my fine fellow,' said the old man. 'You seem a nice
honest lad, and I'm sorry for your sake that apple stealing's punished
so severely in these parts.'
'I've not had any apples yet,' said Diggory. 'Look here, I'll go away if
you like, and we'll say no more about it.'
'That's a handsome offer, very,' said the nasty old man; 'but this is an
enchanted orchard, and you can't go away without with your leave or by
your leave, as you came in. Why, you can't even get out of the tree--and
as for climbing the wall, no one can do it without a white horse to help
him. So now where are you?'
Diggory knew very well where he was, and he tried at once to be
somewhere else, but the old man was right. He could move all about the
tree from branch to branch, but the tree felt wrong way up and he felt
wrong way up; that is to say, he could not get to the ground except by
jumping much harder than he knew how to, and then he knew he would only
have fallen back again, just as you would fall back if you jumped up to
the ceiling. He could have fallen off the tree the other way, of course,
but then he would have fallen up into the sky, and there seemed to be
nothing there to stop his falling for ever and ever. So he held tight
and looked at the old man. And Diggory thought he looked nastier than
ever.