When the time came, Two-Legs filled the house which he had built for a barn with the produce of his field. And the harvest was hardly gathered before he began to think of next year.

 

He ploughed a new field and another and sowed them. The year after, he cleared a part of the forest and tilled that.

 

And so he went on year by year, until he had cultivated the land as far as he could see from his house on the hill.

 

Round the house he had planted a garden with the fruit-trees and herbs which he had a use for. The fields lay in long, even strips, each with its own sort of grass or corn. The whole was fenced in; and Two-Legs was hard upon any who destroyed his work or stole his property.

 

 

2

It looked as though he were the lord of the earth. No one dared set himself up against him. His herd¹ increased from day to day and the wild animals fled far away as soon as they saw a sign of him or his. In the depths of the forest, however, and under the cover of the darkness and whenever they felt safe from him, they talked of the old days when they themselves were the masters, of the shame that it was that he should subjugate² them so and of their hopes of better times:

 

“He throws stones at a poor bird that picks a grain of corn in his field,” said the sparrow.

 

“Yesterday, he drove me out of the hazel-hedge round his garden,” said the squirrel.

 

“He shot an arrow into my left wing because I took a lamb,” said the eagle.

 

“He has driven me right out of the forest,” said the wolf. “He told me that all the game belonged to him and that, if I dared touch it, he would persecute³ me and my cubs⁴ to the end of the world, if need be.”

 

“Perhaps he’ll take it into his head to-morrow to say that all the meadows are his,” cried the stag. “And where are we to graze then?”

 

The thistle, the poppy and the bluebell⁵ pressed close against the hedge. The violet hid herself in the ditch and the stinging-

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