Page:The Children Who Followed the Piper.djvu/147

 As they stayed in that place a change came over John Ball: the skin that was like a beast's skin came off, and his arms became like a youth's arms; he could speak human words, and in a while he came to be the goodly youth that Valentine had known. Thereupon Valentine rejoiced, and they both said that the time had come for them to go seek Golden Hood through the world. They started off, Valentine and John Ball and old Baldwin, the mill horse. They crossed the Valley of Stones, and at long last they came to the black house that was beside the bare tree.

Valentine climbed the bare tree so that he might look over to the mountain. As he did the raven flapped and screeched in the branches; the hag's son came out of the black house, and he had an axe in his hands. Seeing the youth in the tree he began to hack and cut with his sharp, heavy axe; the tree swayed where Valentine climbed, and the raven screeched and flapped around him. Still he went climbing the tree, for he knew that