Thus I dreamed. And I thought that I slept seven centuries and saw the green Castle Hill once more with its lonesome sheep looking into the sunset; with its billowing reeds in the deep moats that whisper to the west wind of the great days that were; with the sleepy little town by the shallow river, its glory gone, its ships gone, the world gone from it, forgotten even as--no, not that. For the great name, the great past, live for all time, and that which I have written is not a dream. It is the story of the castle that stood upon the green hill, and of its king. It is the story of Riberhus. CHAPTER VIII [Illustration: JACKDAWS IN COUNCIL.] The big pear tree that hung over our way to school is gone, but the hawthorn hedge remains. When our young feet trod those toppy pavements, the tree smoothed the thorny path to learning in a way all its own. The late summer season when the sun shone so temptingly on the round red pears, and the old woman over whose garden wall they grew counted her profits at a skilling for two, fell in with our time for practising marksmanship, just as the spring brought its marbles and September its nutting tramps. Then if it befell that a good shot and the law of gravitation operated simultaneously to dislodge the biggest and juiciest pear, and it dropped in our path--surely destiny was to blame, not we. Findings is keepings, and there is no law against picking up a pear in the street. The stork on the Rector’s house looked on unmoved. Being in a way responsible for us, perhaps he was resigned to the ways of boys. Not so the old woman who counted upon our skillings. She stormed in the doorway, much exercised in spirit, and threatened to report us. I think she did once or twice, for we were warned not to go under the tree when pears were falling. But there was no other way out. And we detected, or thought we did, a twinkle in the old Rector’s eye while he took us to task. He had been a boy himself; was yet, despite the infirmities of years, beneath his mask of official sternness. And we evened it up with the pear woman by loyally investing our pennies with her when we had them.