In the heart of Clever Woods, where trees whispered ancient secrets and streams babbled timeless tales, lived Oliver the Owl, known to all as a riddle-loving ranger of the woods. With feathers as gray as twilight and eyes aglow with wisdom, Oliver was a figure everyone turned to for guidance. Each evening, as dusk cast its gentle spell over the woods, animals of every size and shape gathered to share news of the day. Benjamin and his friends were among the most frequent visitors.
One day, as Oliver was about to close his book of fables, a small voice chirped in the branches above.
“Oliver, Oliver!” It was Mabel, the Mapmaker. “Something important has happened. Can you come down quickly?”
Wings outstretched, Oliver swooped from his perch beside a towering white oak.
“Could it wait till morning?” he sighed, yawning. “It’s almost bedtime.”
But Mabel, a cheerful and diligent little thing, fluttered in excitement. “It’s a matter of discovery! I found this old map in the attic.” She handed it to Oliver, who straightaway lost sleep in studying it.
“The marks are most peculiar,” said Mabel, prodding one with her tiny finger. “There could be a mystery hidden in this old thing.”
As she spoke, Benjamin, the bold little rabbit, came leaping from the bramble with his friends. “It’s treasure, is it?” said he. “What manner of treasure? Gold or silver?”
“Neither, I fear,” replied Oliver with a sigh, “but come at early dawn and I will tell you more.”
At that conference, each explained what they would seek if only it could happen. They cast their wishes deep into the night’s still air. So Benjamin wanted a fancy jacket, Finnegan, the Fox, would have dull green eyes as the secret of his life, and Bella, the Bear, desired to know why the sun did not go home like the moon at night.
So when morning came round they met under the white oak, while Oliver hooted hearty good-morning to all the friends who had thronged their chattels the previous night. It was not until they sat around him, however, that he had the heart to tell his quarrel with Mabel’s map.
“I fear it has run far afield of the woods since I last saw it,” he murmured sadly, “but mayhap we could find out if we try.”
“To solve a riddle,” said Oliver, opening his wings, “is indeed like following a winding path. Now some folk see aspects in nothing, while others will not see features in a mountain rising before them. Brave hearts must go and bravest of hearts will search high and low, and low and high again, without sign or sound to cheer them.”
Finnegan pricked up his pink ears, and the others, who were feeling somewhat sulky, showed by their wagging tails their willingness to go a short distance.
“Trilateral,” they all repeated.
But afterwards they were disappointed to see it was nothing but double acorns, and shovel and pickaxes lay there, too. The advice given in the last couplet puzzled them much, too. That was the most curious part of all. Finnegan, with his curious little face and sharp eyes, was already peering round everywhere under the oak.
“There are many ways of finding discovery,” he said. “This riddle is like those great ones in your books, Oliver, that none could ever do nothing with. One might work at them twenty nights and never come one foot nearer the cheer.”
“Wherein lay the cleverness?” said Benjamin, scratching his head. “If we ever find out we only lose our sleep over them, for they are self-answerers in the end. Twilight and the evening star were made to cheer us on to each other in the solving of our mysteries. We are all like the sun and moon—full of faces within us as soon as we meet. That is poetry.”
During the morning, Finnegan, with his clever paws, widened the little hole outside the house in the trunk of the oak tree. It was an undertaking of more difficulty than any of them had imagined. The little bones of all sorts and sizes they unearthed from out the mound had told tales within its hollow trunk long before any lump of earth was removed.
“There is something coming,” said Oliver sleepily. “Do you feel the ground vibrating?”
“I feel my own hunger; I do not,” replied Mabel, flashing her little white breast. “But fire and light will change June into itself in October, without any trouble at all. Moreover, like our mound of bones, rain will bore its way hereafter through gold. Now what infected first all those dear bones I can’t say.”
They had dug down as deep as they were able for their small paws. A couple of worms wriggled their length out of their soft, twinkling skins when the light struck on them.
“Home, home!” said the little creatures. “Do go home!” They waddled inside their mow, but nothing else was coming. Mabel, who was quite mad to see daylight again, begged Oliver to order it to come up at once, for it was an infernally long time in coming!
“Yes,” grinned Finnegan, “and as I don’t care about being burned alive, home, home! Sweet is everybody’s home! We will not wait till night-time, we will lift it up before the day is done. With your permission one half, however, if you will give me your whiskers. Do be quick with it. Give the report on the affair,” he said to Mabel while she was fastening the iron latch inside.
It was already three o’clock when the mound was flat and the post was up. It was joiner’s work all the rest of the afternoon, however, before it could be brought above ground again, and every little joint was glued.
“I did think wild nettle overset us before Golding seconded it,” said Mabel.
Finnegan had the brass trunnion of a water-butt saved to be their doorknob, and Benjamin had found a very comical bootjack below the packing-case that kept his nose clean. They had stuck up flowers of every sort and colour out of Oliver’s book wherever there was room for them; they had arranged all the marrow of their day’s work down the huge bones hanging round the walls, that they might not lose them by and by in the excitement of the next day’s advance; and all the hands of the dial in his lever were the knife-handles of what they had saved.
“I am already quite grown old in experience to-day, and never hoped till now to be what I am,” said Benjamin philosophically. “You will all lose your lives before you have known as much of life as I now know! And Mabel the Mapmaker will be driven mad by your foolish mythuses if you remain so silent over your couch after all.”
They had boiled marrow, etc., to wash into springs and wells; they had crumbled tripe into grains, and had come by and by by what means soever; the red thread of what they were doing ran through all. It struck them in the curiosity they delighted in, however, that just four what was wanted for pushing wealth and health into the dead-wood were wanting in what had been got out of the same dead-wood.
“And are we going to spend those four?”