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moss to sleep on; and they forgot all their troubles, the wicked stewards, and the straying swine. Early in the morning a troop of does came to be milked, fairies brought flowers, and birds brought berries, to show Lady Greensleeves what had bloomed and ripened. She taught the children to make cheese of the does’ milk, and wine of the wood-berries. She showed them the stores of honey which wild bees had made, and left in hollow trees, the rarest plants of the forest, and the herbs that made all its creatures tame.

“All that summer Woodwender and Loveleaves lived with her in the great oak-tree, free from toil and care; and the children would have been happy, but they could hear no tidings of their fathers. At last the leaves began to fade, and the flowers to fall; Lady Greensleeves said that Corner was coming; and one moonlight night she heaped sticks on the fire, and set her door open, when Woodwender and Loveleaves were going to sleep, saying she expected some old friends to tell her the news of the forest.

“Loveleaves was not quite so curious as her father, the Lord of the White Castle; but she kept awake to see what would happen, and terribly frightened the little girl was when in walked a great brown bear.