once on a time there was a man who had a meadow, which lay high up on the hill-side, and in the meadow was a barn, which he had built to keep his hay in. now, i must tell you, there hadn't been much in the barn for the last year or two, for every st. john's night, when the grass stood greenest and deepest, the meadow was eaten down to the very ground the next morning, just as if a whole drove of sheep had been there feeding on it over night. this happened once, and it happened twice; so at last the man grew weary of losing his crop of hay, and said to his sons for he had three of them, and the youngest was nicknamed boots, of course that now one of them must go and sleep in the barn in the outlying field when st. john's night came, for it was too good a joke that his grass should be eaten, root and blade, this year, as it had been the last two years. so whichever of them went must keep a sharp look-out; that was what their father said.