And the old man said: 'Not at all! However, since you had the sense not
to fall off wrong way, I suppose you're the boy I want. Now, look here,
you throw me down those ten big apples, one by one, so that I can catch
them, and I'll let you go out by the Apple Door that no one but me has
the key of.'
'Why don't you pick them yourself?' Diggory asked.
'I'm too old; you know very well that old men don't climb trees. Come,
is it a bargain?'
'I don't know,' said the boy; 'there are lots of apples you can reach
without climbing. Why do you want these so particularly?'
As he spoke, he picked one of the apples and threw it up and caught it.
I say up, but it was down instead, because of the apple-tree being so
very much enchanted.
'Oh, _don't_!' the old man squeaked like a rat in a trap--'_don't_ drop
it! Throw it down to me, you nasty slack-baked, smock-frocked son of a
speckled toad!'
Diggory's blood boiled at hearing his father called a toad.
[Illustration: '"Take that," cried he, aiming an apple at the old man's
head.'--Page 307.]
'Take that!' cried he, aiming the apple at the old man's head.' I wish I
could get out of this tree.'
The apple hit the old man's head and bounced on to the grass, and the
moment that apple touched the ground Diggory found that he _could_ get
out of the tree if he liked, for he felt that he was now the proper way
up once more, and so was the tree.
'So,' he said, 'these are wish-apples, are they?'
'No, no, no, no!' shrieked the old man so earnestly that Diggory knew he
was lying. 'I've just disenchanted you, that's all. You see, most people
fall up out of the tree and you didn't, so I thought I'd let you go,
because I'm a nice kind old man, I am, and I wouldn't so much as hurt a
fly. They aren't wish-apples, indeed they aren't.'
'Really,' said Diggory. 'I wish you'd speak the truth.'
With that he picked the second apple and threw it. And the old man began
to speak the truth as hard as ever he could speak. It was like a child
saying a lesson it has just learned, and is afraid of forgetting before
it can get it said.
'I am a wicked magician. I have turned hundreds of people's heads in
that tree so that they fall into the sky, and when they fall back again,
as they have to do when the tide turns, I make them into apple-trees. I
don't know why I do, but I like to. I suppose it's because I'm wicked. I
never did anything useful with my magic, but I can hurt. And there's
only one way out of this, and I don't mean to show it you.'
'It's a pity you're so wicked,' said Diggory. 'I wish you were good.'
He threw down another apple, and instantly the magician became so good
that he could do nothing but sit down and cry to think how wicked he had
been. He was now perfectly useless. But Diggory was no longer afraid of
him, so he gathered the ten apples that were left and put them inside
his shirt, and came down the tree.
The old man couldn't tell him how to get out, and he couldn't disenchant
the fruit-trees or anything. So Diggory had to spend three wish-apples.
First he spent one on making the old man happy. This was done as it is
in Miss Edgeworth's stories--by giving him a thatched cottage and a
garden, and a devoted grand-daughter to look after him. The next apple
showed Diggory the Apple Door, which he had not been able to find, and
he went out by it. You, of course, can find it on the map, but he had no
map, and, besides, it is spelt differently. Before he went out of the
orchard he threw down another apple, and wished the apple-trees to be
disenchanted. And they were. And then the red-walled orchard was full of
Kings and Princesses, and swineherds and goosegirls, and statesmen and
stevedores, and every kind of person you can or can't think of.
Diggory left them to find their own ways home--some of them lived ever
so long before, and ever so far away--and he himself went out by the
Apple Door, and found his good white horse, who had been eating grass
very happily all the time he had been in the company of the magician,
and that had been two days and a night.
So Invicta was not hungry, but Diggory was; and, in fact, he was so
hungry that he had to use a wish-apple to get his supper, and that was
very, very wasteful of him, and he often regretted it in after years. It
is true that he wished for the best supper in the world, and had it; but
it was only bread-and-milk! If he had wished for the nicest supper it
would have been different, no doubt.
Diggory rode on anxiously, arranging what wishes he should have with
the rest of the apples, but in the dusk he missed his way and was nearly
drowned in a rain-flooded ford, and poor white Invicta was quite carried
away.
Then Diggory took off his shirt to wring the water out, and as he took
it off he said: 'I wish I had my good white horse again.'
And as he said it all the apples but one tumbled out of his shirt on to
the ground, and he heard soft neighings and stampings and hustlings and
rustlings all round him in the dark, and when the moon rose he saw that
he had had his wish--he had his good white horse back again. But as he
had dropped eight apples, he had his good white horse back eight times,
and as eight times one is eight, he had now eight good white horses, all
called Invicta.
'Well, eight horses are better than nothing!' he said; and when he had
tethered the horses he went to sleep, for he felt strangely feeble and
tired.
In the morning he woke with pains in every limb. He thought it was a
cold from the wetting in the ford, but it was really rheumatism. And he
could not get rid of it. He tied seven horses together and led them,
riding on the eighth.
'Eight horses are a pretty good fortune for a woodcutter's son,' he said
to himself, 'and, anyway, I'm too tired to go looking for any better
one.'
So he rode home.
He knew the roads well enough, and yet they seemed different; they were
much better roads to ride over, for one thing, and the hedges and trees
were odd somehow. And the big wood near his father's house seemed very
small as he looked down on it from the hill. But when he got to the
village he thought he must have gone mad, for in the day and two nights
and a day that he had been away the village had grown big and ugly and
yellow-bricky, and there were eight shops and six public-houses besides
the Bill and Billet, and many more people than there used to be, all in
ugly, untidy clothes, and the Round Mound windmill was _gone_! The
people came crowding round him.
'What's become of the mill?' he asked, trembling all over.
The boys and girls and men and women stared, and a very old man stepped
out of the crowd.
'It were pulled down,' he said, 'when I were a boy.'
'And the woodcutter's cottage?'
'That were burnt down a matter of fifty year ago. Was you a native of
these parts, old man?'
There was a large plate-glass shop-window just opposite the crowd that
surrounded Diggory. A dark blind was pulled down inside, because it was
Wednesday and early-closing day. This made a fine mirror, and Diggory
happened to look in it, and there he saw himself--an old, old
white-haired man on a white horse. He had a white beard, too, but it was
quite short, because it had only had since bedtime last night to grow
in.
He almost tumbled off his horse. The landlord of the Ship led him in
to sit by the fire in the bar parlour, and the eight horses were put up
in the stable.
The old man who had told him about the mill came and sat by him, and
poor old Diggory asked questions till he grew tired of hearing the
answer, which was always the same: 'Dead, dead, dead!'
Then he sat silent, and the people in the bar talked about his horses,
and a young man said:
'I wish I'd got e'er a one on 'em. I'd do a tidy bit in fish, an' set up
for myself--so I would.'
'Young man,' said Diggory, 'you may take one of them; its name is
Invicta.'
The young man could hardly believe his fortunate ears. Diggory felt his
heart warm to think that he had made someone else so happy. He felt
actually younger. And next morning he made up his mind to give away all
the horses but one. That one he would sell, and its price would keep him
for the rest of his life: he hoped that would not be long, for he did
not care to go on living now that he had seen the tombstones in the
churchyard with the names of his father and brothers and little Joyce of
the mill.
He led his horses away next day. He did not want to give them all away
in one village, because that would have lessened the value of his gift
to the young man who was going into fish, and, besides, it would have
been awkward to have so many horses of the same name in one village.
He gave away a horse at each village he passed through, and with every
horse he gave away he felt happier and lighter. And when he had given
away the fourth his rheumatism went, and when he had given away the
seventh his beard was gone.
'Now,' he said to himself, 'I will ride home and end my days in my own
village, and be buried with my own people.'
So he turned his horse's head towards home, and he felt so gay and
light-limbed he could hardly believe that he was really an old, old man.
And he rode on.
And at the end of the village he stopped and rubbed his eyes, for there
stood the Round Mound windmill, and on the slope was Joyce, looking
prettier than ever in a russet petticoat and a white neckerchief and a
pink print gown with little red rosebuds on it.
'Oh, Diggory, Diggory,' she cried, 'you've come back, then! You'll take
me with you now, won't you?'
'Have you got a looking-glass, my dear?' said he. 'Then run in and fetch
it.'
She ran. He took it and looked in it. And he saw the same young brown
face and the same bright brown hair that he had always known for _him_,
and he was not old any more. And there was Joyce holding up a face as
sweet as a bunch of flowers.
'Will you take me?' said she.
He stooped down and kissed the face that was so sweet.
'I'll take you,' said he.
And as they went along to his home he told her all the story.
'Well, but,' she said, 'you've got one wish-apple left.'
'Why, so I have,' said he; 'if I hadn't forgotten it!'
'We'll make that into the fortune you went out to find. Do, do let me
look at it!'
He pulled out the apple, and she took it in her hand as she sat behind
him on the big white horse.
'Yes, our fortune's made,' he said; 'but I do wish I knew why I turned
old like that.'
Just then Invicta stumbled, and Joyce caught at her lover to save
herself from falling, and as she caught at him the apple slipped from
her hand and the last wish was granted. For as it bounced on the road
Diggory did know why he had grown old like that. He knew that the
magician had arranged long before that every wish-apple that was used
outside the orchard should add ten years to the wisher's age. So that
the eight horses had made him a hundred years old, and the spell could
only be undone by the wisher's giving away what he'd wished for. So that
it was Diggory's generosity in giving away the horses that had taken him
back to the proper age for being happy in. I don't want to be moral, and
I'm very sorry--but it really was that.
He carried Joyce home to his father's house. They were much too pleased
with each other to bother about the wasted wish-apples.
'You're soon back, my son,' said the woodcutter, laughing.
'Yes,' said Diggory.
'Have you found your fortune?'
'Yes,' said Diggory; 'here she is!'
And he presented Joyce. The woodcutter laughed more than ever, for the
miller's daughter was a bit of an heiress.
'Well, well!' he said.
So they were married, and they had a little farm, and the white horse
was put to the plough, and to the cart, and the harrow, and the waggon;
and he worked hard, and they worked hard, so that they all throve and
were very happy as long as ever they lived.
Said Joyce one day to Diggory, 'How was it you wanted to take me with
you directly you came back, and when you were going away you didn't.'
'I've often wondered about that myself,' he said; 'I think it must have
been the bread-and-milk. You see, it was one of the wish-apple things,
just like the horses were, only they were outside things, so they made
me old outside; but the bread-and milk----'
'Was an inside thing, of course--quite inside.'
'Yes, so it made me old inside of my mind, just old enough to have the
sense to see that _you_ were all the fortune I wanted, and more than I
deserved.'
'I didn't have to be so very old to know what fortune _I_ wanted,' said
Joyce, 'but, then, I was a girl. Boys are always much stupider than
girls, aren't they?'
* * * * *
The only person in this story you are likely to have heard of is, of
course, Invicta, and he is better known as the White Horse of Kent.
You can see pictures of him all over his county: on brewers circulars
and all sorts of documents, and carved in stone on buildings, and even
on the disagreeable, insulting fronts of traction-engines.
Traction-engines pretend to despise horses, but they carry the image of
the White Horse on their hearts. And his name is generally put
underneath his picture, so that there shall be no mistake.