"Of _course_ it is true," Father always began, "because you know
yourselves that you have seen the very place and the Bogle Thorn and
all. No doubt everything has shrunk a good deal since the time the story
tells about. But that is only because you have grown out of all
knowledge, and so everything seems smaller to you."
"I know," cried the Maid, "last year when we came back from the seaside,
the Edam Water looked quite small and shallow, even at the first Torres
Vedras!"
But Sir Toady nipped her good to make her "shut up"--yes, he had grown
so rude in the use of words that that was what he said. But then, most
boys are like that. It is school that does it, and, do you know, when
they come back they even pervert us girls. That this is true was
immediately proved by Maid Margaret giving a fierce kick under the table
to Sir Toady, and whispering back, "Shut up yourself!"
But Father went on, never heeding in the least. A father who can be
conveniently deaf at times is the best kind. Be sure and take no other!
The only genuine has a twinkle in his eye, and a dimple instead of
smiling. You will know by that.
"Well, the Little Green Man," Father went on, "lived in the Bogle Thorn
on the road between Laurieston and the Duchrae. I used to go that way to
school long ago, and at first I was frightened of the Little Green Man.
I used to climb the dyke and go right up by the loch on the moor where
the curlers played in winter, so as not to be compelled to pass that
way. But after a while I got not to mind him a bit. For, you see, he was
a good little man, all clad in green velvet tights, and with a broad
green bonnet on his head like a peaky toadstool. Once or twice when I
caught sight of him up among the branches, he popped into his little
house just as quickly as a rabbit into its hole when you say "Scat!"
And, you see, when once I was sure that he was frightened of _me_, I
used not to mind him a bit. Then by and by I used to sit down and swop
currants and sugar which I had "found" at home for some of the nuts and
lovely spicy fruits that the Little Green Man had stored away. He had
the loveliest little parlor and bedrooms all in the inside of the tree,
everything finished neat as cabinet-making, and the floor carpeted--you
never saw the like--and there were little windows, too, with glass in
them, and shutters that shut with the bark outside, so that you never
could tell there was a window there at all."
[Illustration: "I USED TO SWOP CURRANTS AND SUGAR FOR NUTS AND LOVELY
SPICY FRUITS"]
"And how could you see all that, Father?" asked the Maid, who, as usual,
was immensely interested, not having heard it above a thousand times
before. So it stayed quite new to her.
"Oh," said Father, "the Little Green Man touched a spring, and let me
look through the windows. Of course I was too big to get bodily into the
inside of the rooms, or run up and down the stairs. But when the Little
Green Man got married, he made a beautiful pleasure-ground at the top of
his house, with a clipped-hedge parapet all round to keep the Little
Green Children from falling over."
"Whom did he marry, Father?" said the Maid though, of course, she knew.
"Why, he married the Little Green Woman," said Father in a tone of
surprise mixed with reproof.
He had been asked the same question at least a hundred times before, but
he always answered in the same tone of grieved astonishment, which
showed how clever he was. For he could not have been astonished--not
really, of course. Then he went on with the story of the Little Green
Man. The Little Green Man (said he) had a lot of children. There were
Toppy, Leafy, Branchy, Twiggy, Flowery, Fruity, and Rooty. That made
seven in all, and as they grew up, the Little Green Man made the
playground on the top of the Bogle Thorn ever so much bigger. And he
built the retaining walls higher, so as to keep them from falling over.
Not that that was a very serious matter. For, you see, they could all of
them hang on like monkeys. The only two who really ran some risk of
danger were Toppy and Rooty. For Toppy, of course, had to stay on top,
where he was safest, and knew his way about; and as for Rooty, there was
something in his blood that made him want all the time to worm his way
down into the hidden places under the earth where nobody but he ever
went, and where the corkscrew staircases got perfectly breakneck with
steepness. Then, when he found out this, the Little Green Man took
Rooty, and gave him regular sound lectures about his "habits"--you know
the kind of lecture--you have all got some on your own account. He said
that away off on the face of the wild moor, a good bit back from the
Bogle Thorn, was the cave of the Ugly Gray Dwarf--so called because that
was what he was. He was ugly as a gnarled bit of oak-trunk that they dug
up out of the moss. He was gray because he hid among the stones and
rocks of the moorland, and, worst of all, he lived on what he could
catch to eat--for choice, Little Green Children who had fallen out of
tree-tops, or missed their hold of branches, or been naughty and
wandered out when a root came to the surface. He had a horrid den where
he used to take his prey, and would either roast them before a slow
fire, basting them all the time, or else put them into a cauldron of
cold water, hung on three sticks, and _boil them alive_! (Here the Maid
always grew very pale, and edged as thickly as she could among the crowd
of us, while the boys fingered their (unloaded) revolvers.)
So you can well imagine that it was not always the greatest fun to
wander over the face of that moorland, while this cruel monster, dry as
a chip, still as one of the bowlders among the heather, and invisible as
Will-o'-the-Wisp by day, lay watching the Bogle Thorn and the Little
Green Man's Well, to which some one had to go at least once a day for
water. Several times already the Little Green Man had had to
fight for his life. But he was a good shot with the little fairy
bow-and-arrows--the ones tipped with chips of flint--_you_ know? ("We
know!" came from all the children in a breath.) Besides, Father Green
Man was so tough when you had him that the Ugly Gray Dwarf thought
twice, and even three times, before tackling him. For although he had no
heart to pierce, but only a cold, cold stone out of the bottom of a well
instead, the heads of the tiny chip arrows came off where they hit him
and annoyed him fearfully, wandering about his system and tickling up
unexpected organs. So that at long and last he got to know that he had
better give the Little Green Man a wide berth.
But when he got married, and children began to patter up and down the
dainty little turning staircase of the Bogle Thorn, the Gray Dwarf
rubbed his knotted clawy hands together, and grumbled over and over to
himself--"Fresh Meat! Fresh Meat!! Fresh Meat!!!" And if he did not
laugh, it is certainly reported that he chuckled to himself, like
thunder among the hills very far away.
But of all who went about the passages and ups-and-downs of the Bogle
Thorn, there was none so reckless as Little Rooty. He was just as
rambling, rampageous a boy as any I know! (Here Father looked at us, and
Hugh John nodded at Sir Toady, who nodded back, to show that both
considered the other as "catching it.") More than once the Little Green
Man had even taken a little green switch, and--well, it just happened
the same, so there is no use entering into _that_. But, in spite of all,
Rooty would go off foraging where he had no business to, and that came
quite near to being the end of Little Rooty, who would not "take a
telling," and forgot all about the little green switch as soon as he had
stopped smarting--where he frequently smarted.
But one dreamy afternoon, when even the bumble-bees fell asleep and only
gurgled in the deep fox-glove bells, when his father was lying on the
green couch in the parlor, and his mother was telling the others tales
about "humans" in a shady green place on the tree-top, Little Rooty
slipped away off down-stairs, twenty-five flights to the cellar door
where they took in the winter's fuel--that is, fir-cones chopped small,
which make the best fires in the world, especially in Green Tree-top
Land where fuel is a scarcity, and one has to be careful not to overheat
the chimney, because of the insurance people. Well, Little Rooty found
the door all right, and after having touched the spring, he went out on
the face of the moor. The loch was shining beneath him, but sleepily
too. And it looked so warm and bright that Little Rooty forgot all about
what he had been told--the Ugly Gray Dwarf, the big black pot swinging
on three poles in front of the Grisly Den, with the water just coming to
the boil within it. And Rooty ran as hard as ever he could, without ever
taking a minute to shut the cellar door. He jumped and shouted, and
almost tumbled into Woodhall Loch just as he was, which would have
spoiled his clean new suit of gossamer green velvet that his mother had
finished that morning, and given him because it was just six months to
Christmas, when he got his thicker winter one.
However, he did manage to get them off, and was just getting ready to
plunge into the nice cool water, when the stranded log, on which he had
been sitting taking off his stockings, sat up in its turn and stretched
out a kind of wizened claw that caught Little Rooty by the middle and
held him in the air, kicking and screaming. Then two horny warty lids
winked up, and two eyes like cold gravy looked at him--oh, so coldly and
hatefully! It was the Ugly Gray Dwarf, and he had been lying waiting for
Little Rooty all the afternoon. Then Rooty thought of everything his
father had told him, and wished it had never felt so hot and stuffy and
bumble-bee-y inside the house, and he resolved that if he got off this
time, nothing would ever induce him to disobey his parents again. He
even wished he was back in the wood-cellar, with his father getting the
little green switch down off the shelf. Positively he thought he could
have enjoyed it. Of course Rooty was the first little boy who ever felt
like that, but he did not have a very long time in which to repent, and,
indeed, it mattered very little to the Gray Dwarf whether he did or not.
That hideous brute just pinched him all over to see how fat he was,
gurgling approbation all the time of Little Rooty's "ribs" and "chines"
and "cuts off the joint"--all of which Rooty had always liked very much,
but had never before thought of in so intimate a connection with
himself.
Meanwhile, in the little house of the Bogle Thorn, its walls wainscoted
with green silk from a fairy Liberty's, its ceilings done in Grass of
Parnassus with sprigs and tassels of larch, the afternoon world slept
on. But the Little Green Woman paused in her long drowsy tale-telling to
the children in the shady corner of the Roof Garden. She thought she
heard a cry, so faint and far away that it might have been the squeak of
a field-mouse scuttling away from a weasel among the grass roots.
Then a sudden thought struck her like a knife.
"Where is Rooty? Who saw Rooty last? Toppy, you run and look over the
pricklements and see if you see Rooty. I thought I heard him cry."
Toppy ran to the green wall of thorn, and was just in time to see the
Gray Dwarf toss poor Little Rooty over his shoulder (or at least the
knotted crotch of a tree which served him as a shoulder), and away with
him to his Grisly Den on the face of the moorland. Toppy just managed to
scream, and then his mother ran and caught him, or it might very well
have been all over with Little Toppy. By the time the Little Green Man
was wakened off the green sofa, and had understood what they were saying
(for the entire family talked at once, as is mostly the case with
united families), he ran hastily up to the Roof Garden, and saw the
Gray Dwarf, very little and flat on the face of the heath, just like a
splotch of mildew. And on his shoulder there was a spot of green, hardly
visible, which the father knew at once for his Little Rooty. But he did
not scold--at least not then. He went for his fairy bow, made tiny like
a catapult--not hurrying, you know, but going so fast that it felt as if
the wind was rising all over the house of the Bogle Thorn. The Little
Green Man dipped each arrow-point--that is, the flint part of it--into a
kind of green stuff like porridge, made from hemlock and the berries of
deadly nightshade, with other pleasant and effective things only known
to the Little Green People. He took great care not to let any drip
about, and looked closely to see if there were any scratches on his
hands. For it was quite unusual stuff, and precious. So he did not want
to waste any of it. He needed it all for that mildewy spot crawling over
the moorland towards the Grisly Cave with the green dot on its shoulder
which was his own Rooty.
Perhaps, being exceptionally good children, _you_ are not sorry for
naughty Rooty. ("Oh, yes, we are! We are!") But, anyway, his father was
sorry for him, though all the time he was promising him the best
"hiding" he had ever had in his life when he got him safe back again.
("Bet he never got a whack!" said Sir Toady, who is an authority on the
subject.) So, locking the children in and putting the key in his pocket,
the Little Green Man and his wife went away over the moorland to look
for the Ugly Gray Dwarf. The man did not want the woman to come. But she
begged of him, weeping, saying that she would go "human" if she were
left (and among the Green People that is a terrible word, and a yet more
terrible thing[1]). So in the end the Little Green Man let her come.
[Footnote 1: It is as we say "fey."]
Then she wanted to go direct to the cave, but her husband, who had had a
lot of experience, showed her how impossible and foolish that was. For
the Gray Dwarf would just lie down behind a big bowlder and wait for
them. Then he would stun them with a log or strangle them with his long
twisty fingers as they went by.
So instead they went all the way round by John Knox's Pulpit and the
Folds Firs, that they might turn the flank of the enemy, and so come at
his cave by a way he would never expect. It was a narrow cleft between
two rocks up which they had to come--the Little Green Man and his woman.
They crawled and crawled, noiseless as earth-worms on a plowed field.
All the while the eyes of the Little Green Man shot out small sparkles
of fire, though the lids of them were closed so that they showed like
slits in a drying plaster wall.
After a long climb they looked over a ridge of many bowlders and much
heather--the Little Green Man and his woman close behind him. And at the
sight they saw there the wife would have screamed out and run forward.
For she was a real woman, you see, though little and green. Only her
husband was prepared for her, knowing, after so many years, exactly what
she would do. So he first put the palm of his hand across her mouth to
keep in the scream, and next gave her the pouch of arrow-heads to hold.
Then with a pair of tweezers made of bent wood he lifted the little
poisoned flakelets of flint and dropped each into a split in the
arrow-head. Then his wife deftly bound each of them about with green
cord--for that was _her_ part of the business. She forgot about
screaming when she had anything to do.
Then the Little Green Man peered cautiously from behind a rock, first
giving his wife a good push with his foot as a warning--but, of course,
you know, kindly.
He found himself looking down into a dell surrounded by many high
granite rocks, which made access difficult to the Grisly Cave. The Dwarf
was busy about the great black iron pot in which he was getting ready to
boil Little Rooty. The Green Man saw his boy stripped of his suit of
velvet, and trussed up neck and knee ready for cooking, while every time
the Ugly Gray Dwarf approached he gave him a kick in passing to make him
more tender, grinning and whetting a carving-knife all the time on a
monster "steel" that hung by his side.
So you may believe that in a moment the Green Man had his bow strung
taut, and his heart beat as the dull glitter of the arrow-point, from
which the green stuff was still dripping, came into line with the hairy
throat of the wicked Dwarf.
"_CLIP!_"
That was the smacking sound of the bow-string going back to the
straight.
"_IZZ--IK!_"
That was the sound of the little elf arrow, dropping green juice from
its willow-leaf-shaped head, every drop of which was death.
The "_IK!_" was when the elf shaft struck the Gray Dwarf and the point
broke off in his throat. He said nothing for a moment, but the knife
that was in his hand to cut up Little Rooty with clattered on the
stones, while he himself fell with a "squelch" like a big heap of wet
clothes thrown down on the laundry floor on washing-day morning.
Then they cut Little Rooty's bonds, and took him home on his father's
back, his mother carrying the bow and the precious bag of arrow-heads.
But instead of the sound beating his father had promised him, they gave
Rooty (and all the other children) corn-cake and bramble jam, nut paste,
raspberry short-bread, and heather honey made into toffee. They danced
on the tree-tops all the night long, and illuminated all the windows of
the Bogle Thorn with glow-worms--who, in consideration of the
circumstances, gave their services _gratis_. As for the Gray Dwarf, they
never bothered any more about him, and I dare say if you care to go up
by the Grisly Cave at the end of Deep Dooms Wood on the right, as you
turn to the Falls of Drumbledowndreary, you may find his bones unto
this day.
* * * * *
The end of the story of the Little Green Man, as Father told it for
Fifteen Years, anyway.