This north country oak of my story was less old than the Doomsday Oak. It had been a fine upstanding tree in Queen Elizabeth's reign. For centuries it grew tall and stately, deep-rooted amongst the rocks, by a corner above an old highway that led to a market town.

How many travellers had passed the tree, since that road was a forest track! Hunters, robbers, bowmen; knights on horseback riding along; pikemen, jackmen marching; country folk and drovers; merchants, peddlars with laden pack-horses.

At each change the road was mended and widened. There began to be two-wheeled carts. Then farmers' wives left off riding on pillions; the gentry drove gigs and coaches; and alas! there came the wood wagons.

Other oak trees were carried to the sea-port to make ships' timbers--old England's wooden walls--but the fairy's oak towered out of reach. No wood-feller clambered up to it.

Now our ships are built of steel, and iron horses rush along our roads; and the District Council decided to remove the rocks and corner, to widen the road for motor cars.

Surely it is cruel to cut down a very fine tree! Each dull, dead thud of the axe hurts the little green fairy that lives in its heart. The fairy in the oak had been a harmless timid spirit for many hundred years. Long ago, when the oak was a sapling, there had been wolves; and the dalesmen hunted them with hounds. The hunt swept through the forest; the frightened fairy leaped into the oak branches. She found the tree a place of refuge; therefore she loved it and made it her home. Because it had a guardian fairy, that oak grew tall and strong. And each of the finest trees in the forest had a fairy of its own as well.

There were birch fairies, beech fairies, alder fairies, and fairies of the fir trees and pines; all were dressed in the leaves of their own special trees; and in spring when the trees had new leaves, each fairy got herself a new green gown.

They never went far from the trees that they loved; only on moonlight nights they came down, and they danced together on the ground. In autumn when the leaves fell off and the trees were left bare and cold, each fairy withdrew into the heart of its tree, and slept there, curled up, till spring.

Only the pine and fir fairies kept awake, and danced upon the snow, because the firs and pines do not lose their needle-like evergreen leaves; and that is why fir trees sing in the wind on frosty winter's nights.

The oak fairy had danced with the pine fairies beneath the hunter's moon, because oak trees keep their leaves much later than birch or beech; but the last of the russet oak leaves were blown off by a November gale. She settled herself to sleep. The oak was enormous; tall and bold. It held up its head against wind and snow; and scorned the wintry weather.

But the Surveyor of the District Council has no sentiment; and no respect, either, for fairies or oaks!

The pine fairies were awake and saw what happened from their tree-tops further back in the wood. The pine trees swayed, and moaned, and shivered. But the oak fairy slept through it all. There arrived the surveyor, his assistant with the chain links, two men who carried the theodolite with three legs; a woodmonger; and four members of the Council. They did much measuring with the chains; they made notes in their pocketbooks; they squinted through the thodolite at white and black sticks. Then they clambered up the rocks, and stared at the fairy's oak. The woodmonger measured it with a tape measure; he measured near the foot of the butt; he measured again six foot up; he reckoned the quarter girth; they did calculations according to Hoppus. The councillors said that the tree had an enormous butt; thirty foot run of clean timber to the first branch, with never a knot. They looked at the rocks; and did sums. Then they went away.

Nothing happened for six weeks; except a gale that blew down an ash tree. It crashed amongst the rocks. Its fairy fell out, shrieking. She ran up and down in tattered yellow leaves, till she found an empty bird-nest, and hid in it.

In January a number of men arrived; they had tools, and wheelbarrows, and carts, and a wooden hut. They were quarrymen, navvies, wood-fellers; and carters and wagoners with horses. They cleared away the underwood; they drilled and blasted the rocks. The noise of the blasting was like thunder; it awoke every fairy in the wood.

And they felled the fairy's oak.

For three days they hacked and sawed and drove wedges; the wood was as hard as iron. Their axes broke; their saws were nipped; they lost their wedges overhead in the cuts. But day after day they laboured, and swung their heavy axes; and drove iron wedges with sledge hammer blows into the great tree's heart. Then one climbed the tree and tied a wire rope to its head; and they pulled with a wagon horse. The tree swayed and groaned, and the hawser broke. Again they wielded their axes; and the little fairy sobbed and cried with pain.

Suddenly, with a rending shriek and a roar, the oak thundered down amongst the rock.

It lamed a horse, and it did the men a mischief.

All next day they hacked and sawed; they cut off its head and arms. They left the trunk lying overnight beside the road. The fairy stayed beside it, and caused another accident, upsetting a farmer's cart. His horse in the dusk saw a thing like a little green squirrel that scolded and wrung its hands.

Next day came the wagoners to hoist the great tree; and then again there was disaster. The three legs slipped; the chains broke twice--was it the fury of the little angry spirit that beat against the chains and snapped them?

At length the tree was loaded. They drew away from the wagon with two extra pairs of horses; and the fairy, sullen and exhausted, sat huddled upon the log. They swept the top stones off the walls; they had every sort of trouble; but at last they reached the summit of the moor. Ten chain horses were unhooked; leaving one trembling thill-horse in the shafts. The brake was crewed on hard, to face the steep descent.

Down below the hill there sounded a humming, whirring sound--the noise of the sawmill. The fairy sprang from her tree, and fled away into the woods.

All winter she wandered homeless. One day she climbed into one tree; another day she climbed into another tree. She always chose an oak tree; but she could not settle to sleep. Whenever a load of sawn timber came back up the road from the sawmill, the fairy came down to the road.

She looked at it wistfully; but it was always larch, or ash, or plane; not oak.

She wandered further afield in spring time, into the meadows outside the woods. There was grass for the lambs in the meadows; on the trees young green leaves were budding--but no new green leaves for the oak fairy. Her leaf-gown was tattered and torn.

One day she sat on a tree-top, and the west wind blew over the land. It brought sounds of lambs bleating; and the cuckoo calling. And a strange new sound from the river--clear ringing blows upon oak.

"Men do not fell trees in May, when the sap rises. Why does this sound stir my heart, and make my feet dance, in spite of me? Can I hear cruel hammers and saws upon oak-wood, and feel glad?" said the fairy of the oak.

She came out of the wood, and her feet danced across the meadow, through the cuckoo flowers and the marsh mary-golds, to the banks of the flooded stream, where men were building a bridge. A new bridge to the farm, where none had been before; a wooden bridge with a broad span across the rushing river; and the straight brave timbers that spanned it were made of the fairy's oak!"