'Of course I know it,' he said.
'And then there's the verse about the rings,' said Dan. 'When I was little it always made me feel unhappy in my inside.'
'"Witness those rings and roundelays", do you mean?' boomed Puck, with a voice like a great church organ.
'Of theirs which yet remain, Were footed in Queen Mary's days On many a grassy plain, But since of late Elizabeth, And, later, James came in, Are never seen on any heath As when the time hath been.'
'It's some time since I heard that sung, but there's no good beating about the bush: it's true. The People of the Hills have all left. I saw them come into Old England and I saw them go. Giants, trolls, kelpies, brownies, goblins, imps; wood, tree, mound, and water spirits; heath-people, hill-watchers, treasure-guards, good people, little people, pishogues, leprechauns, night-riders, pixies, nixies, gnomes, and the rest—gone, all gone! I came into England with Oak, Ash and Thorn, and when Oak, Ash and Thorn are gone I shall go too.'
Dan looked round the meadow—at Una's Oak by the lower gate; at the line of ash trees that overhang Otter Pool where the mill-stream spills over when the Mill does not need it, and at the gnarled old white-thorn where Three Cows scratched their necks.
'It's all right,' he said; and added, 'I'm planting a lot of acorns this autumn too.'
'Then aren't you most awfully old?' said Una.
'Not old—fairly long-lived, as folk say hereabouts. Let me see—my friends used to set my dish of cream for me o' nights when Stonehenge was new. Yes, before the Flint Men made the Dewpond under Chanctonbury Ring.'
Una clasped her hands, cried 'Oh!' and nodded her head.