Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

Rudyard Kipling
cloth woodman’s petticoat, belted at the waist with a leather ‘I believe Sailor knows,’ Dan whispered to Una.
strap; and when he turned and grinned, his red lips showed ‘He do,’ said a man behind them. He was dressed in flour
under his sackcloth-coloured beard. His cap was sackcloth sacks like the others, and he leaned on his broad-axe, but the
too, with a flap behind, to keep twigs and bark out of his children, who knew all the wood-gangs, knew he was a
neck. He navigated the tug among pools of heather-water stranger. In his size and oily hairiness he might have been Bunny
that splashed in their faces, and through clumps of young Lewknor’s brother, except that his brown eyes were as soft as
birches that slashed at their legs, and when they hit an old a spaniel’s, and his rounded black beard, beginning close up
toadstooled stump, they never knew whether it would give under them, reminded Una of the walrus in ‘The Walrus and
way in showers of rotten wood, or jar them back again. the Carpenter.’
At the top of Rabbit Shaw half-a-dozen men and a team of ‘Don’t he justabout know?’ he said shyly, and shifted from
horses stood round a forty-foot oak log in a muddy hollow. one foot to the other.
The ground about was poached and stoached with sliding ‘Yes. “What Cattiwow can’t get out of the woods must have
hoofmarks, and a wave of dirt was driven up in front of the roots growing to her.”’ Dan had heard old Hobden say this a
butt.
few days before.
‘What did you want to bury her for this way?’ said At that minute Puck pranced up, picking his way through
Cattiwow. He took his broad-axe and went up the log tap- the pools of black water in the ling.
ping it.
‘Look out!’ cried Una, jumping forward. ‘He’ll see you,
‘She’s sticked fast,’ said ‘Bunny’ Lewknor, who managed Puck!’
the other team.
‘Me and Mus’ Robin are pretty middlin’ well acquainted,’
Cattiwow unfastened the five wise horses from the tug. They the man answered with a smile that made them forget all
cocked their ears forward, looked, and shook themselves. about walruses.
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