But what concerned me just then was how there wasn’t one of them wearing what I’d call a friendly expression. I looked to the Apple Tree Man and didn’t take much comfort from the fact that he didn’t seem near so worried as I was feeling my ownself. I started to say something, but then I remembered his warning. So I just stood there and kept my mouth shut, waiting along with the others as those ’sangfolk came up the slope toward us.

Oh, it was a strange sight. A goodly number of them were taller than the little man I’d found—two or three times his one-foot height, some of them. But the lot of them looked pretty much the same, more tree than man. They were like walking bushes with bark for skin and rooty hair, and twigs and leaves and everysuch growing up out of them every which place you might look.

The one in front was near four feet high, but something made him seem bigger still. I can’t tell you exactly what it was. Maybe it was the fact that he was the boss, which was something I found out as soon as he and the Apple Tree Man began to talk.

“So, Applejack,” this big ’sangman said. “Have you come to trade my boy’s life for the two girls?”

The Apple Tree Man shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was mild, with just the smallest hint of a rebuke in it.

“We were merely bringing him back to you,” he said. “Doing what any good neighbor would do when he sees someone in trouble.”