Once upon a time there was a lad about eighteen years old named Tom
Tiver who had hired out to work for a farmer. One beautiful Sunday night
in July he was walking across a field. The weather was warm and still,
and the air was full of little sounds as if the trees and grasses were
softly chattering to themselves.
But all at once there came from on ahead the most pitiful wailings that
ever he had heard--a sobbing as of a child spent with fear and nearly
heartbroken. Soon the sound changed to a moan, and then rose again in a
long whimpering wailing that made Tom sick to hark to it. He began to
look everywhere for the poor creature.
"It must be Sally Barton's child," he thought. "She was always a flighty
thing and never looks after it properly. Like as not she's flaunting
about the lanes, and has clean forgot the baby."
He looked and looked, yet he could see nought. Meanwhile the whimpering
got louder and stronger and there seemed to be words of some sort
mingled with the sobs. Tom harkened with all his ears, and heard the
unhappy creature saying: "Oh! the stone, the great big stone! Oh! the
stone on top!"
He wondered where the stone might be, and he looked until he found,
close to a hedge, a great flat stone almost buried in the earth and
hidden in the matted grass and weeds. Down he fell on his knees and
listened again. Clearer than ever, but tired with crying came the little
sobbing voice, "Oh! oh! the stone, the stone on top!"
Tom was scared, and he disliked to meddle with the thing, but he could
not withstand the whimpering baby, and he tore like mad at the earth
around the stone till he got his fingers under it and felt it loosening.
Then a puff of warm air came out of the damp earth and the tangle of
grass and growing things, and he tipped the stone back out of the way.
Underneath where it had been was a cavity, and there lay a tiny thing on
its back blinking up at the moon and at him. It was no bigger than a
year old baby, but it had a great mass of hair and a heavy beard, and
the hair and the beard were so long and so twisted round and round the
creature's body that Tom could not see its clothes. The hair was yellow
and silky like a child's, but the face of the thing was as old as if it
had not been young and smooth for hundreds of years. There were just
wrinkles and two bright black eyes set in a lot of shining yellow hair;
and the skin was the color of fresh-turned earth in the spring--brown as
brown could be--and its bare hands and feet were as brown as its face.
The crying had stopped, but the tears were standing on its cheeks, and
the tiny creature looked dazed in the moonshine and the night air.
When its eyes got used to the moonlight it looked boldly up in Tom's
face and said: "Tom, you are a good lad."
The coolness with which it spoke was astonishing, and its voice was high
and piping like the twittering of a little bird. Tom touched his hat,
and tried to think what he ought to say.
"Hoots!" the thing exclaimed, "you needn't be afraid of me. You have
done me a good turn, and I'll do as much for you."