"A diant on the top of a mountain," he repeated. "Is it very f'ightening, Mabel?"
"Oh no. Listen and I'll tell you. Once, a long time ago, there was, a long way off, a strange country. There were lots and lots of forests in it, and at the side of the biggest forest of all there rose a chain of high mountains. The people who lived in this forest were poor, simple sort of people—they hadn't much time for anything but work, for it was difficult to gain enough to live on. Most of them were charcoal-burners, and there were not very many of them altogether. Of course in a forest there wouldn't be much room for cottages and houses, would there? And their cottages were none of them near together. Each family had its own hut, quite separated from the others, and unless you belonged to the forest you could hardly find your way from one part of it to the other. The poor people, too, were so busy that they had not much time for going to see each other, or for amusing themselves in any way. They all had a pale sad look, something like the look that I have heard papa say the poor people in some parts of England have—the people in those parts where they work so awfully hard in dark smoky towns and never see the sun, or the green fields, or anything fresh and pretty. Of course the forest people were not as badly off as that—for their work any way was in the open air, and the forest was clean—not like dirty factories, even though it was so dark. It was the want of sunshine that was their worst trouble, and that gave them that white, dull, half-frightened look. The forest was too thick and dense for the sun to get really into it, even in winter, and then, of course, the rays are so thin and pale that they aren't much good if they do come. And the mountains at the side came so close down to the edge of the forest that there was no getting any sunshine there either, for it was the north side there, the side that the sunshine couldn't get to. So for these reasons the place had come to be called 'the sunless country.'"
"What was there at the other side of the forest?" said Percy; "couldn't they have got into the sunshine at that side?"
"No," said Mabel. "I think there was a river or something. Or else it was that the forest was so very, very big that it would have been quite a journey to get out at any other side. I think that was it. Any way they couldn't. And they just had to live on without sunshine as well as they could. Their fathers had done so before them, and there was no help for it, they thought. They were too poor and too hard-worked to move away to another country, or to do anything but just go through each day as it came in a dull sad way, seldom speaking even to each other.
"But do you know, it had not always been so in the sunless forest, though the better times were so long ago that hardly any of the poor people knew it had ever been different. There had, once upon a time, been a way into the sunshine on the other side of the mountain, and this way lay right through the great hill itself. But the mountain belonged to a great and very powerful giant"—at this Ted edged still closer to Mabel—"who lived in it quite alone. Sometimes he used to come out at a hole in the top, which was his door, and stay up there for a while looking about him, staring at the black forest down at his feet, and smiling grimly to himself at the thought of how dark and dull it must be for the people who lived in it. For he was not a kind giant at all. It was he that had shut up the passage through which the poor forest people used to pass to their bright cottages on the other side, for in those days they didn't live in the forest, they only went there for their work, and on Sundays and holidays they were all happy and merry together, and the little children grew up rosy and bright, quite different from the poor little wan-faced creatures that now hung sadly about at the hut doors in the forest, looking as if they didn't know how to laugh or play."
"Why did the naughty diant shut up the way?" asked Ted.
"Because he had a quarrel with the forest people. He wanted them to let their little boys and girls, or some of them, come to him to be his servants, but they wouldn't, and so he was so angry that he shut up the door. But that was so long ago now that the people had almost forgotten about it—the children that the giant had wanted to be his servants were old grandfathers and grandmothers now, and some of them were dead, I daresay, so that the real history of their troubles was forgotten by them but not by the giant, for whenever he came out at the top of the mountain to take some air, he used to look down at the forest and think how dull and miserable they must be there."
"Nasty diant," said Ted.
"Yes, he was very unkind, but still I think you would have been rather sorry for him too. He was old and all alone, and of course nobody loved him. The people in the forest hardly ever spoke of him. They knew he was there, or that he used to be there, and now and then some of the children who had heard about him used to feel afraid of him and whisper to each other that he would eat them up if he could catch them, but that was about all the notice they took of him. They seemed to have forgotten that he was the cause of their sad, gloomy lives, and indeed I am not sure that any except some very old people really knew. Among these very old people there were a man and his wife who were almost the poorest of all in the forest. They were so poor because they were almost past work, and they had no children to work for them. All that they had was a little granddaughter, who lived with them because her father and mother were dead. And it was a queer thing that she was quite different from the other poor children in the forest. They were all pale and sad and crushed-looking like their parents. This little girl was bright-haired and bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked. She was the one merry happy creature in the forest, and all the poor people used to stand and look at her as she flitted about, and wish that their children were the same. I don't know what her real name was; the story didn't tell, but the name she got to have among the forest people was Sunshine—at least it was Sunshine in German, but I think 'Sunny' is a nicer name, don't you?"
"Yes," said Percy; and