Just then Invicta stumbled, and Joyce caught at her lover to save herself from falling, and as she caught at him the apple slipped from her hand and the last wish was granted. For as it bounced on the road Diggory did know why he had grown old like that. He knew that the magician had arranged long before that every wish-apple that was used outside the orchard should add ten years to the wisher's age. So that the eight horses had made him a hundred years old, and the spell could only be undone by the wisher's giving away what he'd wished for. So that it was Diggory's generosity in giving away the horses that had taken him back to the proper age for being happy in. I don't want to be moral, and I'm very sorry--but it really was that. He carried Joyce home to his father's house. They were much too pleased with each other to bother about the wasted wish-apples. 'You're soon back, my son,' said the woodcutter, laughing. 'Yes,' said Diggory. 'Have you found your fortune?' 'Yes,' said Diggory; 'here she is!' And he presented Joyce. The woodcutter laughed more than ever, for the miller's daughter was a bit of an heiress. 'Well, well!' he said. So they were married, and they had a little farm, and the white horse was put to the plough, and to the cart, and the harrow, and the waggon; and he worked hard, and they worked hard, so that they all throve and were very happy as long as ever they lived. Said Joyce one day to Diggory, 'How was it you wanted to take me with you directly you came back, and when you were going away you didn't.' 'I've often wondered about that myself,' he said; 'I think it must have been the bread-and-milk. You see, it was one of the wish-apple things, just like the horses were, only they were outside things, so they made me old outside; but the bread-and milk----' 'Was an inside thing, of course--quite inside.' 'Yes, so it made me old inside of my mind, just old enough to have the sense to see that _you_ were all the fortune I wanted, and more than I deserved.' 'I didn't have to be so very old to know what fortune _I_ wanted,' said Joyce, 'but, then, I was a girl. Boys are always much stupider than girls, aren't they?' * * * * * The only person in this story you are likely to have heard of is, of course, Invicta, and he is better known as the White Horse of Kent. You can see pictures of him all over his county: on brewers circulars and all sorts of documents, and carved in stone on buildings, and even on the disagreeable, insulting fronts of traction-engines. Traction-engines pretend to despise horses, but they carry the image of the White Horse on their hearts. And his name is generally put underneath his picture, so that there shall be no mistake. SIR CHRISTOPHER COCKLESHELL