Puck of Pook's Hill

Rudyard Kipling

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  • WELAND'S SWORD
  • Puck's Song
  • A Tree Song
  • YOUNG MEN AT THE MANOR
  • Sir Richard's Song
  • THE KNIGHTS OF THE JOYOUS VENTURE
  • Harp Song of the Dane Women
  • Thorkild's Song
  • OLD MEN AT PEVENSEY
  • The Runes on Weland's Sword
  • A CENTURION OF THE THIRTIETH
  • Cities and Thrones and Powers
  • A British-Roman Song
  • ON THE GREAT WALL
  • A Song to Mithras
  • THE WINGED HATS
  • A Pict Song
  • HAL O' THE DRAFT
  • Prophets have honour all over the Earth,
  • A Smugglers' Song
  • 'DYMCHURCH FLIT'
  • The Bee Boy's Song
  • A Three-Part Song
  • THE TREASURE AND THE LAW
  • Song of the Fifth River
  • The Children's Song



  • WELAND'S SWORD





    Puck's Song




    See you the dimpled track that runs,
    All hollow through the wheat?
    O that was where they hauled the guns
    That smote King Philip's fleet!

    See you our little mill that clacks,
    So busy by the brook?
    She has ground her corn and paid her tax
    Ever since Domesday Book.

    See you our stilly woods of oak,
    And the dread ditch beside?
    O that was where the Saxons broke,
    On the day that Harold died!

    See you the windy levels spread
    About the gates of Rye?
    O that was where the Northmen fled,
    When Alfred's ships came by!

    See you our pastures wide and lone,
    Where the red oxen browse?
    O there was a City thronged and known,
    Ere London boasted a house!

    And see you, after rain, the trace
    Of mound and ditch and wall?
    O that was a Legion's camping-place,
    When Caesar sailed from Gaul!

    And see you marks that show and fade,
    Like shadows on the Downs?
    O they are the lines the Flint Men made,
    To guard their wondrous towns!

    Trackway and Camp and City lost,
    Salt Marsh where now is corn;
    Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,
    And so was England born!

    She is not any common Earth,
    Water or Wood or Air,
    But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye,
    Where you and I will fare.



    The children were at the Theatre, acting to Three Cows as
    much as they could remember of Midsummer Night's
    Dream. Their father had made them a small play out of the
    big Shakespeare one, and they had rehearsed it with him
    and with their mother till they could say it by heart. They
    began when Nick Bottom the weaver comes out of the
    bushes with a donkey's head on his shoulders, and finds
    Titania, Queen of the Fairies, asleep. Then they skipped
    to the part where Bottom asks three little fairies to scratch
    his head and bring him honey, and they ended where he
    falls asleep in Titania's arms. Dan was Puck and Nick
    Bottom, as well as all three Fairies. He wore a pointy-
    cloth cap for Puck, and a paper donkey's head out
    of a Christmas cracker - but it tore if you were not careful
    - for Bottom. Una was Titania, with a wreath of
    columbines and a foxglove wand.

    The Theatre lay in a meadow called the Long Slip. A
    little mill-stream, carrying water to a mill two or three
    fields away, bent round one corner of it, and in the
    middle of the bend lay a large old Fairy Ring of darkened
    grass, which was the stage. The millstream banks, overgrown
    with willow, hazel, and guelder-rose, made convenient
    places to wait in till your turn came; and a
    grown-up who had seen it said that Shakespeare himself
    could not have imagined a more suitable setting for his
    play. They were not, of course, allowed to act on
    Midsummer Night itself, but they went down after tea on
    Midsummer Eve, when the shadows were growing, and
    they took their supper - hard-boiled eggs, Bath Oliver
    biscuits, and salt in an envelope - with them. Three Cows
    had been milked and were grazing steadily with a tearing
    noise that one could hear all down the meadow; and the
    noise of the Mill at work sounded like bare feet running
    on hard ground. A cuckoo sat on a gate-post singing his
    broken June tune, 'cuckoo-cuck', while a busy kingfisher
    crossed from the mill-stream, to the brook which ran on
    the other side of the meadow. Everything else was a sort
    of thick, sleepy stillness smelling of meadow-sweet and
    dry grass.

    Their play went beautifully. Dan remembered all his
    parts - Puck, Bottom, and the three Fairies - and Una
    never forgot a word of Titania - not even the difficult
    piece where she tells the Fairies how to feed Bottom with
    'apricocks, green figs, and dewberries', and all the lines
    end in 'ies'. They were both so pleased that they acted it
    three times over from beginning to end before they sat
    down in the unthistly centre of the Ring to eat eggs and
    Bath Olivers. This was when they heard a whistle among
    the alders on the bank, and they jumped.

    The bushes parted. In the very spot where Dan had
    stood as Puck they saw a small, brown, broad-
    shouldered, pointy-eared person with a snub nose, slanting
    blue eyes, and a grin that ran right across his freckled
    face. He shaded his forehead as though he were watching
    Quince, Snout, Bottom, and the others rehearsing
    Pyramus and Thisbe, and, in a voice as deep as Three Cows
    asking to be milked, he began:

         'What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here,
         So near the cradle of the fairy Queen?'

    He stopped, hollowed one hand round his ear, and,
    with a wicked twinkle in his eye, went on:

         'What, a play toward? I'll be an auditor;
         An actor, too, perhaps, if I see cause.'

    The children looked and gasped. The small thing - he was
    no taller than Dan's shoulder - stepped quietly into the Ring.

    'I'm rather out of practice,' said he; 'but that's the way
    my part ought to be played.'

    Still the children stared at him - from his dark-blue cap, like
    a big columbine flower, to his bare, hairy feet. At last he laughed.

    'Please don't look like that. It isn't my fault. What else
    could you expect?' he said.

    'We didn't expect any one,' Dan answered slowly.
    'This is our field.'

    'Is it?' said their visitor, sitting down. 'Then what on
    Human Earth made you act Midsummer Night's Dream
    three times over, on Midsummer Eve, in the middle of a
    Ring, and under - right under one of my oldest hills in Old
    England? Pook's Hill - Puck's Hill - Puck's Hill - Pook's
    Hill! It's as plain as the nose on my face.'

    He pointed to the bare, fern-covered slope of Pook's
    Hill that runs up from the far side of the mill-stream to a
    dark wood. Beyond that wood the ground rises and rises
    for five hundred feet, till at last you climb out on the bare
    top of Beacon Hill, to look over the Pevensey Levels and
    the Channel and half the naked South Downs.

    'By Oak, Ash, and Thorn!' he cried, still laughing. 'If
    this had happened a few hundred years ago you'd have
    had all the People of the Hills out like bees in June!'

    'We didn't know it was wrong,' said Dan.

    'Wrong!' The little fellow shook with laughter. 'Indeed,
    it isn't wrong. You've done something that Kings
    and Knights and Scholars in old days would have given
    their crowns and spurs and books to find out. If Merlin
    himself had helped you, you couldn't have managed
    better! You've broken the Hills - you've broken the Hills!
    It hasn't happened in a thousand years.'

    'We - we didn't mean to,' said Una.

    'Of course you didn't! That's just why you did it.
    Unluckily the Hills are empty now, and all the People of
    the Hills are gone. I'm the only one left. I'm Puck, the
    oldest Old Thing in England, very much at your service if
    - if you care to have anything to do with me. If you don't,
    of course you've only to say so, and I'll go.'

    He looked at the children, and the children looked at
    him for quite half a minute. His eyes did not twinkle any
    more. They were very kind, and there was the beginning
    of a good smile on his lips.

    Una put out her hand. 'Don't go,' she said. 'We like you.'
    'Have a Bath Oliver,' said Dan, and he passed over the
    squashy envelope with the eggs.

    'By Oak, Ash and Thorn,' cried Puck, taking off his
    blue cap, 'I like you too. Sprinkle a plenty salt on the
    biscuit, Dan, and I'll eat it with you. That'll show you the
    sort of person I am. Some of us' - he went on, with his
    mouth full - 'couldn't abide Salt, or Horse-shoes over a
    door, or Mountain-ash berries, or Running Water, or
    Cold Iron, or the sound of Church Bells. But I'm Puck!'

    He brushed the crumbs carefully from his doublet and
    shook hands.

    'We always said, Dan and I,' Una stammered, 'that if it
    ever happened we'd know ex-actly what to do; but - but
    now it seems all different somehow.'

    'She means meeting a fairy,'said Dan. 'I never believed
    in 'em - not after I was six, anyhow.'

    'I did,' said Una. 'At least, I sort of half believed till we
    learned "Farewell, Rewards". Do you know "Farewell,
    Rewards and Fairies"?'

    'Do you mean this?' said Puck. He threw his big head
    back and began at the second line:

         'Good housewives now may say,
         For now foul sluts in dairies
         Do fare as well as they;
         And though they sweep their hearths no less

    ('Join in, Una!')

         Than maids were wont to do,
         Yet who of late for cleanliness
         Finds sixpence in her shoe?'

    The echoes flapped all along the flat meadow.
    'Of course I know it,' he said.

    'And then there's the verse about the rings,' said Dan.
    'When I was little it always made me feel unhappy in my
    inside.'

    "'Witness those rings and roundelays", do you mean?'
    boomed Puck, with a voice like a great church organ.

         'Of theirs which yet remain,
         Were footed in Queen Mary's days
         On many a grassy plain,
         But since of late Elizabeth,
         And, later, James came in,
         Are never seen on any heath
         As when the time hath been.

    'It's some time since I heard that sung, but there's no
    good beating about the bush: it's true. The People of the
    Hills have all left. I saw them come into Old England and
    I saw them go. Giants, trolls, kelpies, brownies, goblins,
    imps; wood, tree, mound, and water spirits; heath-
    people, hill-watchers, treasure-guards, good people,
    little people, pishogues, leprechauns, night-riders,
    pixies, nixies, gnomes, and the rest - gone, all gone! I
    came into England with Oak, Ash and Thorn, and when
    Oak, Ash and Thorn are gone I shall go too.'

    Dan looked round the meadow - at Una's Oak by the
    lower gate; at the line of ash trees that overhang Otter
    Pool where the millstream spills over when the Mill does
    not need it, and at the gnarled old white-thorn where
    Three Cows scratched their necks.

    'It's all right,' he said; and added, 'I'm planting a lot of
    acorns this autumn too.'

    'Then aren't you most awfully old?' said Una.

    'Not old - fairly long-lived, as folk say hereabouts. Let
    me see - my friends used to set my dish of cream for me o'
    nights when Stonehenge was new. Yes, before the Flint
    Men made the Dewpond under Chanctonbury Ring.'
    Una clasped her hands, cried 'Oh!' and nodded her head.

    'She's thought a plan,' Dan explained. 'She always
    does like that when she thinks a plan.'

    'I was thinking - suppose we saved some of our
    porridge and put it in the attic for you? They'd notice if
    we left it in the nursery.'

    'Schoolroom,' said Dan quickly, and Una flushed,
    because they had made a solemn treaty that summer not
    to call the schoolroom the nursery any more.

    'Bless your heart o' gold!' said Puck. 'You'll make a fine
    considering wench some market-day. I really don't want
    you to put out a bowl for me; but if ever I need a bite, be
    sure I'll tell you.'

    He stretched himself at length on the dry grass, and the
    children stretched out beside him, their bare legs waving
    happily in the air. They felt they could not be afraid of
    him any more than of their particular friend old Hobden
    the hedger. He did not bother them with grown-up
    questions, or laugh at the donkey's head, but lay and
    smiled to himself in the most sensible way.
    'Have you a knife on you?' he said at last.

    Dan handed over his big one-bladed outdoor knife,
    and Puck began to carve out a piece of turf from the centre
    of the Ring.

    'What's that for - Magic?' said Una, as he pressed up
    the square of chocolate loam that cut like so much cheese.

    'One of my little magics,' he answered, and cut
    another. 'You see, I can't let you into the Hills because the
    People of the Hills have gone; but if you care to take seisin
    from me, I may be able to show you something out of the
    common here on Human Earth. You certainly deserve it.'

    'What's taking seisin?' said Dan, cautiously.

    'It's an old custom the people had when they bought
    and sold land. They used to cut out a clod and hand it
    over to the buyer, and you weren't lawfully seised of
    your land - it didn't really belong to you - till the other
    fellow had actually given you a piece of it -'like this.' He
    held out the turves.

    'But it's our own meadow,' said Dan, drawing back.
    'Are you going to magic it away?'

    Puck laughed. 'I know it's your meadow, but there's
    a great deal more in it than you or your father ever
    guessed. Try!'

    He turned his eyes on Una.

    'I'll do it,' she said. Dan followed her example at once.

    'Now are you two lawfully seised and possessed of all
    Old England,' began Puck, in a sing-song voice. 'By right
    of Oak, Ash, and Thorn are you free to come and go and
    look and know where I shall show or best you please.
    You shall see What you shall see and you shall hear What
    you shall hear, though It shall have happened three
    thousand year; and you shall know neither Doubt nor
    Fear. Fast! Hold fast all I give you.'

    The children shut their eyes, but nothing happened.

    'Well?' said Una, disappointedly opening them. 'I
    thought there would be dragons.'

    "'Though It shall have happened three thousand
    year,"' said Puck, and counted on his fingers. 'No; I'm
    afraid there were no dragons three thousand years ago.'

    'But there hasn't happened anything at all,' said Dan.
    'Wait awhile,' said Puck. 'You don't grow an oak in a
    year - and Old England's older than twenty oaks. Let's sit
    down again and think. I can do that for a century at a time.'

    'Ah, but you're a fairy,' said Dan.

    'Have you ever heard me say that word yet?' said Puck quickly.

    'No. You talk about "the People of the Hills", but you
    never say "fairies",' said Una. 'I was wondering at that.
    Don't you like it?'

    'How would you like to be called "mortal" or "human
    being" all the time?' said Puck; 'or "son of Adam" or
    "daughter of Eve"?'

    'I shouldn't like it at all,' said Dan. 'That's how the
    Djinns and Afrits talk in the Arabian Nights.'

    'And that's how I feel about saying - that word that I
    don't say. Besides, what you call them are made-up things
    the People of the Hills have never heard of - little
    buzzflies with butterfly wings and gauze petticoats, and
    shiny stars in their hair, and a wand like a schoolteacher's
    cane for punishing bad boys and rewarding good ones. I
    know 'em!'

    'We don't mean that sort,'said Dan. 'We hate 'em too.'

    'Exactly,' said Puck. 'Can you wonder that the People
    of the Hills don't care to be confused with that painty-
    winged, wand-waving, sugar-and-shake-your-head set
    of impostors? Butterfly wings, indeed! I've seen Sir Huon
    and a troop of his people setting off from Tintagel Castle
    for Hy-Brasil in the teeth of a sou'-westerly gale, with the
    spray flying all over the Castle, and the Horses of the
    Hills wild with fright. Out they'd go in a lull, screaming
    like gulls, and back they'd be driven five good miles
    inland before they could come head to wind again.
    Butterfly-wings! It was Magic - Magic as black as Merlin
    could make it, and the whole sea was green fire and white
    foam with singing mermaids in it. And the Horses of the
    Hills picked their way from one wave to another by the
    lightning flashes! That was how it was in the old days!'

    'Splendid,' said Dan, but Una shuddered.

    'I'm glad they're gone, then; but what made the People
    of the Hills go away?' Una asked.

    'Different things. I'll tell you one of them some day -
    the thing that made the biggest flit of any,' said Puck. 'But
    they didn't all flit at once. They dropped off, one by one,
    through the centuries. Most of them were foreigners who
    couldn't stand our climate. They flitted early.'

    'How early?' said Dan.

    'A couple of thousand years or more. The fact is they
    began as Gods. The Phoenicians brought some over
    when they came to buy tin; and the Gauls, and the Jutes,
    and the Danes, and the Frisians, and the Angles brought
    more when they landed. They were always landing in
    those days, or being driven back to their ships, and they
    always brought their Gods with them. England is a bad
    country for Gods. Now, I began as I mean to go on. A
    bowl of porridge, a dish of milk, and a little quiet fun with
    the country folk in the lanes was enough for me then, as it
    is now. I belong here, you see, and I have been mixed up
    with people all my days. But most of the others insisted
    on being Gods, and having temples, and altars, and
    priests, and sacrifices of their own.'

    'People burned in wicker baskets?' said Dan. 'Like
    Miss Blake tells us about?'

    'All sorts of sacrifices,' said Puck. 'If it wasn't men, it
    was horses, or cattle, or pigs, or metheglin - that's a
    sticky, sweet sort of beer. I never liked it. They were a
    stiff-necked, extravagant set of idols, the Old Things. But
    what was the result? Men don't like being sacrificed at the
    best of times; they don't even like sacrificing their farm-
    horses. After a while, men simply left the Old Things
    alone, and the roofs of their temples fell in, and the Old
    Things had to scuttle out and pick up a living as they
    could. Some of them took to hanging about trees, and
    hiding in graves and groaning o' nights. If they groaned
    loud enough and long enough they might frighten a poor
    countryman into sacrificing a hen, or leaving a pound
    of butter for them. I remember one Goddess called
    Belisama. She became a common wet water-spirit somewhere
    in Lancashire. And there were hundreds of other
    friends of mine. First they were Gods. Then they were
    People of the Hills, and then they flitted to other
    places because they couldn't get on with the English
    for one reason or another. There was only one Old
    Thing, I remember, who honestly worked for his
    living after he came down in the world. He was called
    Weland, and he was a smith to some Gods. I've
    forgotten their names, but he used to make them swords
    and spears. I think he claimed kin with Thor of
    the Scandinavians.'

    'Heroes of Asgard Thor?' said Una. She had been reading
    the book.

    'Perhaps,' answered Puck. 'None the less, when bad
    times came, he didn't beg or steal. He worked; and I was
    lucky enough to be able to do him a good turn.'

    'Tell us about it,' said Dan. 'I think I like hearing of Old Things.'

    They rearranged themselves comfortably, each chewing
    a grass stem. Puck propped himself on one strong
    arm and went on:

    'Let's think! I met Weland first on a November afternoon
    in a sleet storm, on Pevensey Level.'

    'Pevensey? Over the hill, you mean?' Dan pointed south.

    'Yes; but it was all marsh in those days, right up to
    Horsebridge and Hydeneye. I was on Beacon Hill - they
    called it Brunanburgh then - when I saw the pale flame
    that burning thatch makes, and I went down to look.
    Some pirates - I think they must have been Peor's men -
    were burning a village on the Levels, and Weland's
    image - a big, black wooden thing with amber beads
    round his neck - lay in the bows of a black thirty-two-oar
    galley that they had just beached. Bitter cold it was! There
    were icicles hanging from her deck and the oars were
    glazed over with ice, and there was ice on Weland's lips.
    When he saw me he began a long chant in his own
    tongue, telling me how he was going to rule England,
    and how I should smell the smoke of his altars from
    Lincolnshire to the Isle of Wight. I didn't care! I'd seen too
    many Gods charging into Old England to be upset about
    it. I let him sing himself out while his men were burning
    the village, and then I said (I don't know what put it into
    my head), "Smith of the Gods," I said, "the time comes
    when I shall meet you plying your trade for hire
    by the wayside."'

    'What did Weland say?' said Una. 'Was he angry?'

    'He called me names and rolled his eyes, and I went
    away to wake up the people inland. But the pirates
    conquered the country, and for centuries Weland was a
    most important God. He had temples everywhere - from
    Lincolnshire to the Isle of Wight, as he said - and his
    sacrifices were simply scandalous. To do him justice, he
    preferred horses to men; but men or horses, I knew that
    presently he'd have to come down in the world - like the
    other Old Things. I gave him lots of time - I gave him
    about a thousand years - and at the end of 'em I went into
    one of his temples near Andover to see how he prospered.
    There was his altar, and there was his image, and
    there were his priests, and there were the congregation,
    and everybody seemed quite happy, except Weland and
    the priests. In the old days the congregation were
    unhappy until the priests had chosen their sacrifices; and so
    would you have been. When the service began a priest
    rushed out, dragged a man up to the altar, pretended to
    hit him on the head with a little gilt axe, and the man fell
    down and pretended to die. Then everybody shouted:
    "A sacrifice to Weland! A sacrifice to Weland!"'

    'And the man wasn't really dead?' said Una.

    'Not a bit. All as much pretence as a dolls' tea-party.
    Then they brought out a splendid white horse, and the
    priest cut some hair from its mane and tail and burned it
    on the altar, shouting, "A sacrifice!" That counted the
    same as if a man and a horse had been killed. I saw poor
    Weland's face through the smoke, and I couldn't help
    laughing. He looked so disgusted and so hungry, and all
    he had to satisfy himself was a horrid smell of burning
    hair. Just a dolls' tea-party!

    'I judged it better not to say anything then ('twouldn't
    have been fair), and the next time I came to Andover, a
    few hundred years later, Weland and his temple were
    gone, and there was a Christian bishop in a church there.
    None of the People of the Hills could tell me anything
    about him, and I supposed that he had left England.'
    Puck turned, lay on his other elbow, and thought for a
    long time.

    'Let's see,' he said at last. 'It must have been some few
    years later - a year or two before the Conquest, I think -
    that I came back to Pook's Hill here, and one evening I
    heard old Hobden talking about Weland's Ford.'

    'If you mean old Hobden the hedger, he's only seventy-two.
    He told me so himself,' said Dan. 'He's a intimate
    friend of ours.'

    'You're quite right,' Puck replied. 'I meant old Hobden's
    ninth great-grandfather. He was a free man and
    burned charcoal hereabouts. I've known the family,
    father and son, so long that I get confused sometimes.
    Hob of the Dene was my Hobden's name, and he lived at
    the Forge cottage. Of course, I pricked up my ears when I
    heard Weland mentioned, and I scuttled through the
    woods to the Ford just beyond Bog Wood yonder.' He
    jerked his head westward, where the valley narrows
    between wooded hills and steep hop-fields.

    'Why, that's Willingford Bridge,' said Una. 'We go
    there for walks often. There's a kingfisher there.'

    'It was Weland's Ford then, dearie. A road led down to
    it from the Beacon on the top of the hill - a shocking bad
    road it was - and all the hillside was thick, thick oak-
    forest, with deer in it. There was no trace of Weland, but
    presently I saw a fat old farmer riding down from the
    Beacon under the greenwood tree. His horse had cast a
    shoe in the clay, and when he came to the Ford he
    dismounted, took a penny out of his purse, laid it on a
    stone, tied the old horse to an oak, and called out:
    "Smith, Smith, here is work for you!" Then he sat down
    and went to sleep. You can imagine how I felt when I saw
    a white-bearded, bent old blacksmith in a leather apron
    creep out from behind the oak and begin to shoe the
    horse. It was Weland himself. I was so astonished that I
    jumped out and said: "What on Human Earth are you
    doing here, Weland?"'

    'Poor Weland!' sighed Una.

    'He pushed the long hair back from his forehead (he
    didn't recognize me at first). Then he said: "You ought to
    know. You foretold it, Old Thing. I'm shoeing horses for
    hire. I'm not even Weland now," he said. "They call me
    Wayland-Smith."'

    'Poor chap!' said Dan. 'What did you say?'

    'What could I say? He looked up, with the horse's foot
    on his lap, and he said, smiling, "I remember the time
    when I wouldn't have accepted this old bag of bones as a
    sacrifice, and now I'm glad enough to shoe him for a penny."

    "'Isn't there any way for you to get back to Valhalla, or
    wherever you come from?" I said.

    "'I'm afraid not, " he said, rasping away at the hoof. He
    had a wonderful touch with horses. The old beast was
    whinnying on his shoulder. "You may remember that I
    was not a gentle God in my Day and my Time and my
    Power. I shall never be released till some human being
    truly wishes me well."

    "'Surely," said I, "the farmer can't do less than that.
    You're shoeing the horse all round for him."

    "'Yes," said he, "and my nails will hold a shoe from
    one full moon to the next. But farmers and Weald clay,"
    said he, "are both uncommon cold and sour."

    'Would you believe it, that when that farmer woke and
    found his horse shod he rode away without one word of
    thanks? I was so angry that I wheeled his horse right
    round and walked him back three miles to the Beacon,
    just to teach the old sinner politeness.'

    'Were you invisible?' said Una. Puck nodded, gravely.

    'The Beacon was always laid in those days ready to
    light, in case the French landed at Pevensey; and I walked
    the horse about and about it that lee-long summer night.
    The farmer thought he was bewitched - well, he was, of
    course - and began to pray and shout. I didn't care! I was
    as good a Christian as he any fair-day in the County, and
    about four o'clock in the morning a young novice came
    along from the monastery that used to stand on the top of
    Beacon Hill.'

    'What's a novice?' said Dan.

    'It really means a man who is beginning to be a monk,
    but in those days people sent their sons to a monastery
    just the same as a school. This young fellow had been to a
    monastery in France for a few months every year, and he
    was finishing his studies in the monastery close to his
    home here. Hugh was his name, and he had got up to go
    fishing hereabouts. His people owned all this valley.
    Hugh heard the farmer shouting, and asked him what in
    the world he meant. The old man spun him a wonderful
    tale about fairies and goblins and witches; and I know he
    hadn't seen a thing except rabbits and red deer all that
    night. (The People of the Hills are like otters - they don't
    show except when they choose.) But the novice wasn't a
    fool. He looked down at the horse's feet, and saw the
    new shoes fastened as only Weland knew how to fasten
    'em. (Weland had a way of turning down the nails that
    folks called the Smith's Clinch.)

    "'H'm!" said the novice. "Where did you get your
    horse shod?"

    'The farmer wouldn't tell him at first, because the
    priests never liked their people to have any dealings with
    the Old Things. At last he confessed that the Smith had
    done it. "What did you pay him?" said the novice.
    "Penny," said the farmer, very sulkily. "That's less than
    a Christian would have charged," said the novice. "I
    hope you threw a 'thank you' into the bargain." "No,"
    said the farmer; "Wayland-Smith's a heathen." "Heathen
    or no heathen," said the novice, "you took his help,
    and where you get help there you must give thanks."
    "What?" said the farmer - he was in a furious temper
    because I was walking the old horse in circles all this time
    - "What, you young jackanapes?" said he. "Then by
    your reasoning I ought to say 'Thank you' to Satan if he
    helped me?" "Don't roll about up there splitting reasons
    with me," said the novice. "Come back to the Ford and
    thank the Smith, or you'll be sorry."

    'Back the farmer had to go. I led the horse, though no
    one saw me, and the novice walked beside us, his gown
    swishing through the shiny dew and his fishing-rod
    across his shoulders, spear-wise. When we reached the
    Ford again - it was five o'clock and misty still under the
    oaks - the farmer simply wouldn't say "Thank you." He
    said he'd tell the Abbot that the novice wanted him to
    worship heathen Gods. Then Hugh the novice lost his
    temper. He just cried, "Out!" put his arm under the
    farmer's fat leg, and heaved him from his saddle on to the
    turf, and before he could rise he caught him by the back of
    the neck and shook him like a rat till the farmer growled,
    "Thank you, Wayland-Smith."'

    'Did Weland see all this?' said Dan.

    'Oh yes, and he shouted his old war-cry when the
    farmer thudded on to the ground. He was delighted.
    Then the novice turned to the oak tree and said, "Ho,
    Smith of the Gods! I am ashamed of this rude farmer; but
    for all you have done in kindness and charity to him and
    to others of our people, I thank you and wish you well."
    Then he picked up his fishing-rod - it looked more like a
    tall spear than ever - and tramped off down your valley.'

    'And what did poor Weland do?' said Una.

    'He laughed and he cried with joy, because he had
    been released at last, and could go away. But he was an
    honest Old Thing. He had worked for his living and he
    paid his debts before he left. "I shall give that novice a
    gift," said Weland. "A gift that shall do him good the
    wide world over and Old England after him. Blow up my
    fire, Old Thing, while I get the iron for my last task."
    Then he made a sword - a dark-grey, wavy-lined sword -
    and I blew the fire while he hammered. By Oak, Ash and
    Thorn, I tell you, Weland was a Smith of the Gods! He
    cooled that sword in running water twice, and the third
    time he cooled it in the evening dew, and he laid it out in
    the moonlight and said Runes (that's charms) over it, and
    he carved Runes of Prophecy on the blade. "Old Thing,"
    he said to me, wiping his forehead, "this is the best blade
    that Weland ever made. Even the user will never know
    how good it is. Come to the monastery."

    'We went to the dormitory where the monks slept, we
    saw the novice fast asleep in his cot, and Weland put the
    sword into his hand, and I remember the young fellow
    gripped it in his sleep. Then Weland strode as far as he
    dared into the Chapel and threw down all his shoeing-
    tools - his hammers and pincers and rasps - to show that
    he had done with them for ever. It sounded like suits of
    armour falling, and the sleepy monks ran in, for they
    thought the monastery had been attacked by the French.
    The novice came first of all, waving his new sword and
    shouting Saxon battle-cries. When they saw the shoeing-
    tools they were very bewildered, till the novice asked
    leave to speak, and told what he had done to the farmer,
    and what he had said to Wayland-Smith, and how,
    though the dormitory light was burning, he had found
    the wonderful Rune-carved sword in his cot.

    'The Abbot shook his head at first, and then he laughed
    and said to the novice: "Son Hugh, it needed no sign
    from a heathen God to show me that you will never be a
    monk. Take your sword, and keep your sword, and go
    with your sword, and be as gentle as you are strong and
    courteous. We will hang up the Smith's tools before the
    Altar," he said, "because, whatever the Smith of the
    Gods may have been, in the old days, we know that he
    worked honestly for his living and made gifts to Mother
    Church." Then they went to bed again, all except the
    novice, and he sat up in the garth playing with his sword.
    Then Weland said to me by the stables: "Farewell, Old
    Thing; you had the right of it. You saw me come to
    England, and you see me go. Farewell!"

    'With that he strode down the hill to the corner of the
    Great Woods - Woods Corner, you call it now - to the
    very place where he had first landed - and I heard him
    moving through the thickets towards Horsebridge for a
    little, and then he was gone. That was how it happened. I
    saw it.'

    Both children drew a long breath.

    'But what happened to Hugh the novice?' said Una.

    'And the sword?' said Dan.

    Puck looked down the meadow that lay all quiet and
    cool in the shadow of Pook's Hill. A corncrake jarred in a
    hay-field near by, and the small trouts of the brook began
    to jump. A big white moth flew unsteadily from the
    alders and flapped round the children's heads, and the
    least little haze of water-mist rose from the brook.
    'Do you really want to know?' Puck said.

    'We do,' cried the children. 'Awfully!'

    'Very good. I promised you that you shall see What
    you shall see, and you shall hear What you shall hear,
    though It shall have happened three thousand year; but
    just now it seems to me that, unless you go back to the
    house, people will be looking for you. I'll walk with you
    as far as the gate.'

    'Will you be here when we come again?' they asked.

    'Surely, sure-ly,' said Puck. 'I've been here some time
    already. One minute first, please.'

    He gave them each three leaves - one of Oak, one of
    Ash and one of Thorn.

    'Bite these,' said he. 'Otherwise you might be talking at
    home of what you've seen and heard, and - if I know
    human beings - they'd send for the doctor. Bite!'

    They bit hard, and found themselves walking side by
    side to the lower gate. Their father was leaning over it.

    'And how did your play go?' he asked.

    'Oh, splendidly,' said Dan. 'Only afterwards, I think,
    we went to sleep. it was very hot and quiet. Don't you
    remember, Una?'

    Una shook her head and said nothing.

    'I see,' said her father.

         'Late - late in the evening Kilmeny came home,
         For Kilmeny had been she could not tell where,
         And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare.

    But why are you chewing leaves at your time of life,
    daughter? For fun?'

    'No. It was for something, but I can't exactly remember,'
    said Una.

    And neither of them could till -



    A Tree Song




    Of all the trees that grow so fair,
    Old England to adorn,
    Greater are none beneath the Sun,
    Than Oak and Ash and Thorn.
    Sing Oak and Ash and Thorn, good Sirs
    (All of a Midsummer morn)!
    Surely we sing no little thing,
    In Oak and Ash and Thorn!

    Oak of the Clay lived many a day,
    Or ever Aeneas began;
    Ash of the Loam was a lady at home,
    When Brut was an outlaw man;
    Thorn of the Down saw New Troy Town
    (From which was London born);
    Witness hereby the ancientry
    Of Oak and Ash and Thorn!
    Yew that is old in churchyard mould,
    He breedeth a mighty bow;
    Alder for shoes do wise men choose,
    And beech for cups also.
    But when ye have killed, and your bowl is spilled,
    And your shoes are clean outworn,
    Back ye must speed for all that ye need,
    To Oak and Ash and Thorn!

    Ellum she hateth mankind, and waiteth
    Till every gust be laid,
    To drop a limb on the head of him
    That anyway trusts her shade:
    But whether a lad be sober or sad,
    Or mellow with ale from the horn,
    He will take no wrong when he lieth along
    'Neath Oak and Ash and Thorn!

    Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,
    Or he would call it a sin;
    But - we have been out in the woods all night,
    A-conjuring Summer in!
    And we bring you news by word of mouth -
    Good news for cattle and corn -
    Now is the Sun come up from the South,
    With Oak and Ash and Thorn!

    Sing Oak and Ash and Thorn, good Sirs
    (All of a Midsummer morn)!
    England shall bide till Judgement Tide,
    By Oak and Ash and Thorn!




    YOUNG MEN AT THE MANOR




    They were fishing, a few days later, in the bed of the
    brook that for centuries had cut deep into the soft valley
    soil. The trees closing overhead made long tunnels
    through which the sunshine worked in blobs and
    patches. Down in the tunnels were bars of sand and
    gravel, old roots and trunks covered with moss or
    painted red by the irony water; foxgloves growing lean
    and pale towards the light; clumps of fern and thirsty shy
    flowers who could not live away from moisture and
    shade. In the pools you could see the wave thrown up by
    the trouts as they charged hither and yon, and the pools
    were joined to each other - except in flood-time, when all
    was one brown rush - by sheets of thin broken water that
    poured themselves chuckling round the darkness of the
    next bend.

    This was one of the children's most secret hunting-
    grounds, and their particular friend, old Hobden the
    hedger, had shown them how to use it. Except for the
    click of a rod hitting a low willow, or a switch and tussle
    among the young ash leaves as a line hung up for the
    minute, nobody in the hot pasture could have guessed
    what game was going on among the trouts below the banks.

    'We've got half a dozen,' said Dan, after a warm, wet
    hour. 'I vote we go up to Stone Bay and try Long Pool.'

    Una nodded - most of her talk was by nods - and they
    crept from the gloom of the tunnels towards the tiny weir
    that turns the brook into the mill-stream. Here the banks
    are low and bare, and the glare of the afternoon sun
    on the Long Pool below the weir makes your eyes ache.

    When they were in the open they nearly fell down
    with astonishment. A huge grey horse, whose tail-hairs
    crinkled the glassy water, was drinking in the pool, and
    the ripples about his muzzle flashed like melted gold. On
    his back sat an old, white-haired man dressed in a loose
    glimmery gown of chain-mail. He was bare-headed, and
    a nut-shaped iron helmet hung at his saddle-bow. His
    reins were of red leather five or six inches deep, scalloped
    at the edges, and his high padded saddle with its red
    girths was held fore and aft by a red leather breastband
    and crupper.

    'Look!' said Una, as though Dan were not staring his
    very eyes out. 'It's like the picture in your room - "Sir
    Isumbras at the Ford".'

    The rider turned towards them, and his thin, long face
    was just as sweet and gentle as that of the knight who
    carries the children in that picture.

    'They should be here now, Sir Richard,' said Puck's
    deep voice among the willow-herb.

    'They are here,' the knight said, and he smiled at Dan
    with the string of trouts in his hand. 'There seems no
    great change in boys since mine fished this water.'

    'If your horse has drunk, we shall be more at ease in the
    Ring,' said Puck; and he nodded to the children as
    though he had never magicked away their memories a
    week before.

    The great horse turned and hoisted himself into the
    pasture with a kick and a scramble that tore the clods
    down rattling.

    'Your pardon!' said Sir Richard to Dan. 'When
    these lands were mine, I never loved that mounted men
    should cross the brook except by the paved ford. But
    my Swallow here was thirsty, and I wished to meet you.'

    'We're very glad you've come, sir,'said Dan.'It doesn't
    matter in the least about the banks.'

    He trotted across the pasture on the sword side of the
    mighty horse, and it was a mighty iron-handled sword
    that swung from Sir Richard's belt. Una walked behind
    with Puck. She remembered everything now.

    'I'm sorry about the Leaves,' he said, 'but it would
    never have done if you had gone home and told, would it?'

    'I s'pose not,' Una answered. 'But you said that all the
    fair - People of the Hills had left England.'

    'So they have; but I told you that you should come and
    go and look and know, didn't I? The knight isn't a fairy.
    He's Sir Richard Dalyngridge, a very old friend of mine.
    He came over with William the Conqueror, and he wants
    to see you particularly.'

    'What for?' said Una.

    'On account of your great wisdom and learning,' Puck
    replied, without a twinkle.

    'Us?' said Una. 'Why, I don't know my Nine Times -
    not to say it dodging, and Dan makes the most awful mess
    of fractions. He can't mean us!'

    'Una!' Dan called back. 'Sir Richard says he is going to
    tell what happened to Weland's sword. He's got it. Isn't it
    splendid?'

    'Nay - nay,' said Sir Richard, dismounting as they
    reached the Ring, in the bend of the mill-stream bank. 'It
    is you that must tell me, for I hear the youngest child in
    our England today is as wise as our wisest clerk.' He
    slipped the bit out of Swallow's mouth, dropped the
    ruby-red reins over his head, and the wise horse moved
    off to graze.

    Sir Richard (they noticed he limped a little) unslung his
    great sword.

    'That's it,' Dan whispered to Una.

    'This is the sword that Brother Hugh had from
    Wayland-Smith,' Sir Richard said. 'Once he gave it me,
    but I would not take it; but at the last it became mine after
    such a fight as never christened man fought. See!' He half
    drew it from its sheath and turned it before them. On
    either side just below the handle, where the Runic letters
    shivered as though they were alive, were two deep
    gouges in the dull, deadly steel. 'Now, what Thing made
    those?' said he. 'I know not, but you, perhaps, can say.'

    'Tell them all the tale, Sir Richard,' said Puck. 'It
    concerns their land somewhat.'

    'Yes, from the very beginning,' Una pleaded, for the
    knight's good face and the smile on it more than ever
    reminded her of 'Sir Isumbras at the Ford'.

    They settled down to listen, Sir Richard bare-headed to
    the sunshine, dandling the sword in both hands, while
    the grey horse cropped outside the Ring, and the helmet
    on the saddle-bow clinged softly each time he jerked his head.

    'From the beginning, then,' Sir Richard said, 'since it
    concerns your land, I will tell the tale. When our Duke
    came out of Normandy to take his England, great knights
    (have ye heard?) came and strove hard to serve the Duke,
    because he promised them lands here, and small knights
    followed the great ones. My folk in Normandy were
    poor; but a great knight, Engerrard of the Eagle -
    Engenulf De Aquila - who was kin to my father, followed
    the Earl of Mortain, who followed William the Duke, and
    I followed De Aquila. Yes, with thirty men-at-arms out of
    my father's house and a new sword, I set out to conquer
    England three days after I was made knight. I did not
    then know that England would conquer me. We went up
    to Santlache with the rest - a very great host of us.'

    'Does that mean the Battle of Hastings - Ten Sixty-Six?'
    Una whispered, and Puck nodded, so as not to interrupt.

    'At Santlache, over the hill yonder'- he pointed south-
    eastward towards Fairlight - 'we found Harold's men.
    We fought. At the day's end they ran. My men went with
    De Aquila's to chase and plunder, and in that chase
    Engerrard of the Eagle was slain, and his son Gilbert took
    his banner and his men forward. This I did not know till
    after, for Swallow here was cut in the flank, so I stayed to
    wash the wound at a brook by a thorn. There a single
    Saxon cried out to me in French, and we fought together.
    I should have known his voice, but we fought together.
    For a long time neither had any advantage, till by pure
    ill-fortune his foot slipped and his sword flew from his
    hand. Now I had but newly been made knight, and
    wished, above all, to be courteous and fameworthy, so I
    forbore to strike and bade him get his sword again. "A
    plague on my sword," said he. "It has lost me my first
    fight. You have spared my life. Take my sword." He held
    it out to me, but as I stretched my hand the sword
    groaned like a stricken man, and I leaped back crying,
    "Sorcery!"'

    (The children looked at the sword as though it might
    speak again.)

    'Suddenly a clump of Saxons ran out upon me and,
    seeing a Norman alone, would have killed me, but my
    Saxon cried out that I was his prisoner, and beat them off.
    Thus, see you, he saved my life. He put me on my horse
    and led me through the woods ten long miles to this valley.'

    'To here, d'you mean?' said Una.

    'To this very valley. We came in by the Lower Ford
    under the King's Hill yonder' - he pointed eastward
    where the valley widens.

    'And was that Saxon Hugh the novice?' Dan asked.

    'Yes, and more than that. He had been for three years
    at the monastery at Bec by Rouen, where' - Sir Richard
    chuckled - 'the Abbot Herluin would not suffer me to remain.'

    'Why wouldn't he?' said Dan.

    'Because I rode my horse into the refectory, when the
    scholars were at meat, to show the Saxon boys we
    Normans were not afraid of an Abbot. It was that very
    Saxon Hugh tempted me to do it, and we had not met
    since that day. I thought I knew his voice even inside my
    helmet, and, for all that our Lords fought, we each
    rejoiced we had not slain the other. He walked by my
    side, and he told me how a heathen God, as he believed,
    had given him his sword, but he said he had never heard
    it sing before. I remember I warned him to beware of
    sorcery and quick enchantments.' Sir Richard smiled to
    himself. 'I was very young - very young!
    'When we came to his house here we had almost
    forgotten that we had been at blows. It was near
    midnight, and the Great Hall was full of men and women
    waiting news. There I first saw his sister, the Lady
    Aelueva, of whom he had spoken to us in France. She
    cried out fiercely at me, and would have had me hanged
    in that hour, but her brother said that I had spared his life
    - he said not how he saved mine from the Saxons - and
    that our Duke had won the day; and even while they
    wrangled over my poor body, of a sudden he fell down in
    a swoon from his wounds.

    "'This is thy fault," said the Lady Aelueva to me, and
    she kneeled above him and called for wine and cloths.

    "'If I had known," I answered, "he should have ridden
    and I walked. But he set me on my horse; he made no
    complaint; he walked beside me and spoke merrily
    throughout. I pray I have done him no harm."

    "'Thou hast need to pray," she said, catching up her
    underlip. "If he dies, thou shalt hang."

    'They bore off Hugh to his chamber; but three tall men
    of the house bound me and set me under the beam of the
    Great Hall with a rope round my neck. The end of the
    rope they flung over the beam, and they sat them down
    by the fire to wait word whether Hugh lived or died.
    They cracked nuts with their knife-hilts the while.'

    'And how did you feel?' said Dan.

    'Very weary; but I did heartily pray for my schoolmate
    Hugh his health. About noon I heard horses in the valley,
    and the three men loosed my ropes and fled out, and
    De Aquila's men rode up. Gilbert de Aquila came with them,
    for it was his boast that, like his father, he forgot no man
    that served him. He was little, like his father, but terrible,
    with a nose like an eagle's nose and yellow eyes like an
    eagle. He rode tall warhorses - roans, which he bred
    himself - and he could never abide to be helped into the
    saddle. He saw the rope hanging from the beam and
    laughed, and his men laughed, for I was too stiff to rise.

    "'This is poor entertainment for a Norman knight," he
    said, "but, such as it is, let us be grateful. Show me, boy,
    to whom thou owest most, and we will pay them out of hand."'

    'What did he mean? To kill 'em?' said Dan.

    'Assuredly. But I looked at the Lady Aelueva where
    she stood among her maids, and her brother beside her.
    De Aquila's men had driven them all into the Great Hall.'

    'Was she pretty?' said Una.

    'In all my long life I have never seen woman fit to strew
    rushes before my Lady Aelueva,' the knight replied,
    quite simply and quietly. 'As I looked at her I thought I
    might save her and her house by a jest.

    "'Seeing that I came somewhat hastily and without
    warning," said I to De Aquila, "I have no fault to find
    with the courtesy that these Saxons have shown me." But
    my voice shook. It is - it was not good to jest with that
    little man.

    'All were silent awhile, till De Aquila laughed. "Look,
    men - a miracle," said he. "The fight is scarce sped, my
    father is not yet buried, and here we find our youngest
    knight already set down in his Manor, while his Saxons -
    ye can see it in their fat faces - have paid him homage and
    service! By the Saints," he said, rubbing his nose, "I
    never thought England would be so easy won! Surely I
    can do no less than give the lad what he has taken. This
    Manor shall be thine, boy," he said, "till I come again, or
    till thou art slain. Now, mount, men, and ride. We follow
    our Duke into Kent to make him King of England."

    'He drew me with him to the door while they brought
    his horse - a lean roan, taller than my Swallow here, but
    not so well girthed.

    "'Hark to me," he said, fretting with his great war-
    gloves. "I have given thee this Manor, which is a Saxon
    hornets' nest, and I think thou wilt be slain in a month -
    as my father was slain. Yet if thou canst keep the roof on
    the hall, the thatch on the barn, and the plough in the
    furrow till I come back, thou shalt hold the Manor from
    me; for the Duke has promised our Earl Mortain all the
    lands by Pevensey, and Mortain will give me of them
    what he would have given my father. God knows if thou
    or I shall live till England is won; but remember, boy, that
    here and now fighting is foolishness and" - he reached
    for the reins - "craft and cunning is all."

    "'Alas, I have no cunning," said I.

    "'Not yet," said he, hopping abroad, foot in stirrup,
    and poking his horse in the belly with his toe. "Not yet,
    but I think thou hast a good teacher. Farewell! Hold the
    Manor and live. Lose the Manor and hang," he said, and
    spurred out, his shield-straps squeaking behind him.

    'So, children, here was I, little more than a boy, and
    Santlache fight not two days old, left alone with my thirty
    men-at-arms, in a land I knew not, among a people
    whose tongue I could not speak, to hold down the land
    which I had taken from them.'

    'And that was here at home?' said Una.

    'Yes, here. See! From the Upper Ford, Weland's Ford,
    to the Lower Ford, by the Belle Allee, west and east it ran
    half a league. From the Beacon of Brunanburgh behind us
    here, south and north it ran a full league - and all the
    woods were full of broken men from Santlache, Saxon
    thieves, Norman plunderers, robbers, and deer-stealers.
    A hornets' nest indeed!

    'When De Aquila had gone, Hugh would have
    thanked me for saving their lives; but the Lady Aelueva
    said that I had done it only for the sake of receiving the Manor.

    "'How could I know that De Aquila would give it me?"
    I said. "If I had told him I had spent my night in your
    halter he would have burned the place twice over by now."

    "'If any man had put my neck in a rope," she said, "I
    would have seen his house burned thrice over before I
    would have made terms."

    "'But it was a woman," I said; and I laughed, and she
    wept and said that I mocked her in her captivity.

    "'Lady," said I, "there is no captive in this valley
    except one, and he is not a Saxon."

    'At this she cried that I was a Norman thief, who came
    with false, sweet words, having intended from the first to
    turn her out in the fields to beg her bread. Into the fields!
    She had never seen the face of war!

    'I was angry, and answered, "This much at least I can
    disprove, for I swear" - and on my sword-hilt I swore it in
    that place - "I swear I will never set foot in the Great Hall
    till the Lady Aelueva herself shall summon me there."

    'She went away, saying nothing, and I walked out, and
    Hugh limped after me, whistling dolorously (that is a
    custom of the English), and we came upon the three
    Saxons that had bound me. They were now bound by my
    men-at-arms, and behind them stood some fifty stark
    and sullen churls of the House and the Manor, waiting to
    see what should fall. We heard De Aquila's trumpets
    blow thin through the woods Kentward.

    "'Shall we hang these?" said my men.

    "'Then my churls will fight," said Hugh, beneath his
    breath; but I bade him ask the three what mercy they
    hoped for.
    "'None," said they all. "She bade us hang thee if our
    master died. And we would have hanged thee. There is
    no more to it."

    'As I stood doubting, a woman ran down from the oak
    wood above the King's Hill yonder, and cried out that
    some Normans were driving off the swine there.

    "'Norman or Saxon," said I, "we must beat them back,
    or they will rob us every day. Out at them with any arms
    ye have!" So I loosed those three carles and we ran
    together, my men-at-arms and the Saxons with bills and
    axes which they had hidden in the thatch of their huts,
    and Hugh led them. Half-way up the King's Hill we
    found a false fellow from Picardy - a sutler that sold wine
    in the Duke's camp - with a dead knight's shield on his
    arm, a stolen horse under him, and some ten or twelve
    wastrels at his tail, all cutting and slashing at the pigs. We
    beat them off, and saved our pork. One hundred and
    seventy pigs we saved in that great battle.' Sir
    Richard laughed.

    'That, then, was our first work together, and I bade
    Hugh tell his folk that so would I deal with any man,
    knight or churl, Norman or Saxon, who stole as much as
    one egg from our valley. Said he to me, riding home:
    "Thou hast gone far to conquer England this evening." I
    answered: "England must be thine and mine, then. Help
    me, Hugh, to deal aright with these people. Make them
    to know that if they slay me De Aquila will surely send to
    slay them, and he will put a worse man in my place."

    "That may well be true," said he, and gave me his hand.
    "Better the devil we know than the devil we know not, till
    we can pack you Normans home." And so, too, said his
    Saxons; and they laughed as we drove the pigs downhill.
    But I think some of them, even then, began not to hate me.'

    'I like Brother Hugh,' said Una, softly.

    'Beyond question he was the most perfect, courteous,
    valiant, tender, and wise knight that ever drew breath,'
    said Sir Richard, caressing the sword. 'He hung up his
    sword - this sword - on the wall of the Great Hall,
    because he said it was fairly mine, and never he took it
    down till De Aquila returned, as I shall presently show.
    For three months his men and mine guarded the valley,
    till all robbers and nightwalkers learned there was
    nothing to get from us save hard tack and a hanging. Side
    by side we fought against all who came - thrice a week
    sometimes we fought - against thieves and landless
    knights looking for good manors. Then we were in some
    peace, and I made shift by Hugh's help to govern the
    valley - for all this valley of yours was my Manor - as a
    knight should. I kept the roof on the hall and the thatch
    on the barn, but ... the English are a bold people. His
    Saxons would laugh and jest with Hugh, and Hugh with
    them, and - this was marvellous to me - if even the
    meanest of them said that such and such a thing was the
    Custom of the Manor, then straightway would Hugh and
    such old men of the Manor as might be near forsake
    everything else to debate the matter - I have seen them
    stop the Mill with the corn half ground - and if the
    custom or usage were proven to be as it was said, why,
    that was the end of it, even though it were flat against
    Hugh, his wish and command. Wonderful!'

    'Aye,' said Puck, breaking in for the first time. 'The
    Custom of Old England was here before your Norman
    knights came, and it outlasted them, though they fought
    against it cruel.'
    'Not I,' said Sir Richard. 'I let the Saxons go their
    stubborn way, but when my own men-at-arms, Normans
    not six months in England, stood up and told me what
    was the custom of the country, then I was angry. Ah,
    good days! Ah, wonderful people! And I loved them all.'
    The knight lifted his arms as though he would hug the
    whole dear valley, and Swallow, hearing the chink of his
    chain-mail, looked up and whinnied softly.

    'At last,' he went on, 'after a year of striving and
    contriving and some little driving, De Aquila came to the
    valley, alone and without warning. I saw him first at the
    Lower Ford, with a swineherd's brat on his saddle-bow.

    "'There is no need for thee to give any account of thy
    stewardship," said he. "I have it all from the child here."
    And he told me how the young thing had stopped his tall
    horse at the Ford, by waving of a branch, and crying that
    the way was barred. "And if one bold, bare babe be
    enough to guard the Ford in these days, thou hast done
    well," said he, and puffed and wiped his head.

    'He pinched the child's cheek, and looked at our cattle
    in the flat by the river.

    "'Both fat," said he, rubbing his nose. "This is craft
    and cunning such as I love. What did I tell thee when I
    rode away, boy?"

    "'Hold the Manor or hang," said I. I had never
    forgotten it.

    "'True. And thou hast held." He clambered from his
    saddle and with his sword's point cut out a turf from the
    bank and gave it me where I kneeled.'
    Dan looked at Una, and Una looked at Dan.
    'That's seisin,' said Puck, in a whisper.

    "'Now thou art lawfully seised of the Manor, Sir
    Richard," said he -'twas the first time he ever called me
    that - "thou and thy heirs for ever. This must serve till the
    King's clerks write out thy title on a parchment. England
    is all ours - if we can hold it."

    "'What service shall I pay?" I asked, and I remember I
    was proud beyond words.

    "'Knight's fee, boy, knight's fee!" said he, hopping
    round his horse on one foot. (Have I said he was little,
    and could not endure to be helped to his saddle?) "Six
    mounted men or twelve archers thou shalt send me
    whenever I call for them, and - where got you that corn?"
    said he, for it was near harvest, and our corn stood well.
    "I have never seen such bright straw. Send me three bags
    of the same seed yearly, and furthermore, in memory of
    our last meeting - with the rope round thy neck -
    entertain me and my men for two days of each year in the
    Great Hall of thy Manor."

    "'Alas!" said I, "then my Manor is already forfeit. I am
    under vow not to enter the Great Hall." And I told him
    what I had sworn to the Lady Aelueva.'

    'And hadn't you ever been into the house since?' said Una.

    'Never,' Sir Richard answered, smiling. 'I had made
    me a little hut of wood up the hill, and there I did justice
    and slept ... De Aquila wheeled aside, and his shield
    shook on his back. "No matter, boy," said he. "I will
    remit the homage for a year."'

    'He meant Sir Richard needn't give him dinner there
    the first year,' Puck explained.

    'De Aquila stayed with me in the hut, and Hugh, who
    could read and write and cast accounts, showed him the
    Roll of the Manor, in which were written all the names of
    our fields and men, and he asked a thousand questions
    touching the land, the timber, the grazing, the mill, and
    the fish-ponds, and the worth of every man in the valley.
    But never he named the Lady Aelueva's name, nor went
    he near the Great Hall. By night he drank with us in the
    hut. Yes, he sat on the straw like an eagle ruffled in her
    feathers, his yellow eyes rolling above the cup, and he
    pounced in his talk like an eagle, swooping from one
    thing to another, but always binding fast. Yes; he would
    lie still awhile, and then rustle in the straw, and speak
    sometimes as though he were King William himself, and
    anon he would speak in parables and tales, and if at once
    we saw not his meaning he would yerk us in the ribs with
    his scabbarded sword.

    "'Look you, boys," said he, "I am born out of my due
    time. Five hundred years ago I would have made all
    England such an England as neither Dane, Saxon, nor
    Norman should have conquered. Five hundred years
    hence I should have been such a counsellor to Kings as
    the world hath never dreamed of. 'Tis all here," said he,
    tapping his big head, "but it hath no play in this black
    age. Now Hugh here is a better man than thou art,
    Richard." He had made his voice harsh and croaking, like
    a raven's.

    "'Truth," said I. "But for Hugh, his help and patience
    and long-suffering, I could never have kept the Manor."

    "'Nor thy life either," said De Aquila. "Hugh has
    saved thee not once, but a hundred times. Be still,
    Hugh!" he said. "Dost thou know, Richard, why Hugh
    slept, and why he still sleeps, among thy Norman men-
    at-arms?"

    "'To be near me," said I, for I thought this was truth.

    "'Fool!" said De Aquila. "It is because his Saxons have
    begged him to rise against thee, and to sweep every
    Norman out of the valley. No matter how I know. It is
    truth. Therefore Hugh hath made himself an hostage for
    thy life, well knowing that if any harm befell thee from
    his Saxons thy Normans would slay him without
    remedy. And this his Saxons know. Is it true, Hugh?"

    "'In some sort," said Hugh shamefacedly; "at least, it
    was true half a year ago. My Saxons would not harm
    Richard now. I think they know him - but I judged it best
    to make sure."

    'Look, children, what that man had done - and I had
    never guessed it! Night after night had he lain down
    among my men-at-arms, knowing that if one Saxon had
    lifted knife against me, his life would have answered for mine.

    "'Yes," said De Aquila. "And he is a swordless man."
    He pointed to Hugh's belt, for Hugh had put away his
    sword - did I tell you? - the day after it flew from his hand
    at Santlache. He carried only the short knife and the
    long-bow. "Swordless and landless art thou, Hugh; and
    they call thee kin to Earl Godwin." (Hugh was indeed of
    Godwin's blood.) "The Manor that was thine is given to
    this boy and to his children for ever. Sit up and beg, for he
    can turn thee out like a dog, Hugh."

    'Hugh said nothing, but I heard his teeth grind, and I
    bade De Aquila, my own overlord, hold his peace, or I
    would stuff his words down his throat. Then De Aquila
    laughed till the tears ran down his face.

    "'I warned the King," said he, "what would come of
    giving England to us Norman thieves. Here art thou,
    Richard, less than two days confirmed in thy Manor, and
    already thou hast risen against thy overlord. What shall
    we do to him, Sir Hugh?"

    "'I am a swordless man," said Hugh. "Do not jest with
    me," and he laid his head on his knees and groaned.

    "'The greater fool thou," said De Aquila, and all his
    voice changed; "for I have given thee the Manor of
    Dallington up the hill this half-hour since," and he
    yerked at Hugh with his scabbard across the straw.

    "'To me?" said Hugh. "I am a Saxon, and, except that
    I love Richard here, I have not sworn fealty to any Norman."

    "'In God's good time, which because of my sins I shall
    not live to see, there will be neither Saxon nor Norman
    in England," said De Aquila. "If I know men, thou art
    more faithful unsworn than a score of Normans I could
    name. Take Dallington, and join Sir Richard to fight me
    tomorrow, if it please thee!"

    "'Nay," said Hugh. "I am no child. Where I take a gift,
    there I render service"; and he put his hands between De
    Aquila's, and swore to be faithful, and, as I remember, I
    kissed him, and De Aquila kissed us both.

    'We sat afterwards outside the hut while the sun rose,
    and De Aquila marked our churls going to their work in
    the fields, and talked of holy things, and how we should
    govern our Manors in time to come, and of hunting and
    of horse-breeding, and of the King's wisdom and
    unwisdom; for he spoke to us as though we were in all sorts
    now his brothers. Anon a churl stole up to me - he was
    one of the three I had not hanged a year ago - and he
    bellowed - which is the Saxon for whispering - that the
    Lady Aelueva would speak to me at the Great House. She
    walked abroad daily in the Manor, and it was her custom
    to send me word whither she went, that I might set an
    archer or two behind and in front to guard her. Very often
    I myself lay up in the woods and watched on her also.

    'I went swiftly, and as I passed the great door it opened
    from within, and there stood my Lady Aelueva, and she
    said to me: "Sir Richard, will it please you enter your
    Great Hall?" Then she wept, but we were alone.'

    The knight was silent for a long time, his face turned
    across the valley, smiling.
    'Oh, well done!' said Una, and clapped her hands very
    softly. 'She was sorry, and she said so.'

    'Aye, she was sorry, and she said so,' said Sir Richard,
    coming back with a little start. 'Very soon - but he said it
    was two full hours later - De Aquila rode to the door,
    with his shield new scoured (Hugh had cleansed it), and
    demanded entertainment, and called me a false knight,
    that would starve his overlord to death. Then Hugh cried
    out that no man should work in the valley that day, and
    our Saxons blew horns, and set about feasting and drinking,
    and running of races, and dancing and singing; and
    De Aquila climbed upon a horse-block and spoke to
    them in what he swore was good Saxon, but no man
    understood it. At night we feasted in the Great Hall, and
    when the harpers and the singers were gone we four sat
    late at the high table. As I remember, it was a warm night
    with a full moon, and De Aquila bade Hugh take down
    his sword from the wall again, for the honour of the
    Manor of Dallington, and Hugh took it gladly enough.
    Dust lay on the hilt, for I saw him blow it off.

    'She and I sat talking a little apart, and at first we
    thought the harpers had come back, for the Great Hall
    was filled with a rushing noise of music. De Aquila
    leaped up; but there was only the moonlight fretty on the floor.

    "'Hearken!" said Hugh. "It is my sword," and as he
    belted it on the music ceased.

    "'Over Gods, forbid that I should ever belt blade like
    that," said De Aquila. "What does it foretell?"

    "'The Gods that made it may know. Last time it spoke
    was at Hastings, when I lost all my lands. Belike it sings
    now that I have new lands and am a man again," said Hugh.

    'He loosed the blade a little and drove it back happily
    into the sheath, and the sword answered him low and
    crooningly, as - as a woman would speak to a man, her
    head on his shoulder.

    'Now that was the second time in all my life I heard this
    Sword sing.' ...


    'Look!' said Una. 'There's Mother coming down the Long
    Slip. What will she say to Sir Richard? She can't help
    seeing him.'

    'And Puck can't magic us this time,' said Dan.

    'Are you sure?' said Puck; and he leaned forward and
    whispered to Sir Richard, who, smiling, bowed his head.
    'But what befell the sword and my brother Hugh I will
    tell on another time,' said he, rising. 'Ohe, Swallow!'
    The great horse cantered up from the far end of the
    meadow, close to Mother.

    They heard Mother say: 'Children, Gleason's old horse
    has broken into the meadow again. Where did he get through?'
    (*49)

    'Just below Stone Bay,' said Dan. 'He tore down simple
    flobs of the bank! We noticed it just now. And we've
    caught no end of fish. We've been at it all the afternoon.'
    And they honestly believed that they had. They never
    noticed the Oak, Ash and Thorn leaves that Puck had
    slyly thrown into their laps.



    Sir Richard's Song




    I followed my Duke ere I was a lover,
    To take from England fief and fee;
    But now this game is the other way over -
    But now England hath taken me!

    I had my horse, my shield and banner,
    And a boy's heart, so whole and free;
    But now I sing in another manner -
    But now England hath taken me!

    As for my Father in his tower,
    Asking news of my ship at sea;
    He will remember his own hour -
    Tell him England hath taken me!

    As for my Mother in her bower,
    That rules my Father so cunningly;
    She will remember a maiden's power -
    Tell her England hath taken me!

    As for my Brother in Rouen city,
    A nimble and naughty page is he;
    But he will come to suffer and pity -
    Tell him England hath taken me!

    As for my little Sister waiting
    In the pleasant orchards of Normandie;
    Tell her youth is the time of mating -
    Tell her England hath taken me!

    As for my Comrades in camp and highway,
    That lift their eyebrows scornfully;
    Tell them their way is not my way -
    Tell them England hath taken me!

    Kings and Princes and Barons famed,
    Knights and Captains in your degree;
    Hear me a little before I am blamed -
    Seeing England hath taken me!

    Howso great man's strength be reckoned,
    There are two things he cannot flee;
    Love is the first, and Death is the second -
    And Love, in England, hath taken me!




    THE KNIGHTS OF THE JOYOUS VENTURE




    Harp Song of the Dane Women




    What is a woman that you forsake her,
    And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
    To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

    She has no house to lay a guest in -
    But one chill bed for all to rest in,
    That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

    She has no strong white arms to fold you,
    But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you
    Bound on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

    Yet, when the signs of summer thicken,
    And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,
    Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken -

    Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters, -
    And steal away to the lapping waters,
    And look at your ship in her winter quarters.

    You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables,
    The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables -
    To pitch her sides and go over her cables!

    Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow:
    And the sound of your oar-blades falling hollow
    Is all we have left through the months to follow.

    Ah, what is a Woman that you forsake her,
    And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
    To go with the old grey Widow-maker?


    It was too hot to run about in the open, so Dan asked their
    friend, old Hobden, to take their own dinghy from the
    pond and put her on the brook at the bottom of the
    garden. Her painted name was the Daisy, but for exploring
    expeditions she was the Golden Hind or the Long
    Serpent, or some such suitable name. Dan hiked and
    howked with a boat-hook (the brook was too narrow for
    sculls), and Una punted with a piece of hop-pole. When
    they came to a very shallow place (the Golden Hind drew
    quite three inches of water) they disembarked and
    scuffled her over the gravel by her tow-rope, and
    when they reached the overgrown banks beyond the
    garden they pulled themselves upstream by the
    low branches.

    That day they intended to discover the North Cape like
    'Othere, the old sea-captain', in the book of verses which
    Una had brought with her; but on account of the heat
    they changed it to a voyage up the Amazon and the
    sources of the Nile. Even on the shaded water the air was
    hot and heavy with drowsy scents, while outside,
    through breaks in the trees, the sunshine burned the
    pasture like fire. The kingfisher was asleep on his watching-
    branch, and the blackbirds scarcely took the trouble
    to dive into the next bush. Dragonflies wheeling and
    clashing were the only things at work, except the
    moorhens and a big Red Admiral, who flapped down out
    of the sunshine for a drink.

    When they reached Otter Pool the Golden Hind
    grounded comfortably on a shallow, and they lay
    beneath a roof of close green, watching the water trickle
    over the flood-gates down the mossy brick chute from the
    mill-stream to the brook. A big trout - the children knew
    him well - rolled head and shoulders at some fly that
    sailed round the bend, while, once in just so often, the
    brook rose a fraction of an inch against all the wet
    pebbles, and they watched the slow draw and shiver of a
    breath of air through the tree-tops. Then the little voices
    of the slipping water began again.

    'It's like the shadows talking, isn't it?' said Una. She
    had given up trying to read. Dan lay over the bows,
    trailing his hands in the current. They heard feet on the
    gravel-bar that runs half across the pool and saw Sir
    Richard Dalyngridge standing over them.

    'Was yours a dangerous voyage?' he asked, smiling.

    'She bumped a lot, sir,' said Dan. 'There's hardly any
    water this summer.'

    'Ah, the brook was deeper and wider when my
    children played at Danish pirates. Are you pirate-folk?'

    'Oh no. We gave up being pirates years ago,'explained
    Una. 'We're nearly always explorers now. Sailing round
    the world, you know.'

    'Round?' said Sir Richard. He sat him in the comfortable
    crotch of an old ash-root on the bank. 'How can it be round?'

    'Wasn't it in your books?' Dan suggested. He had been
    doing geography at his last lesson.

    'I can neither write nor read,' he replied. 'Canst thou
    read, child?'

    'Yes,' said Dan, 'barring the very long words.'

    'Wonderful! Read to me, that I may hear for myself.'

    Dan flushed, but opened the book and began -
    gabbling a little - at 'The Discoverer of the North Cape.'

         'Othere, the old sea-captain,
         Who dwelt in Helgoland,
         To King Alfred, the lover of truth,
         Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth,
         Which he held in his brown right hand.'

    'But - but - this I know! This is an old song! This I have
    heard sung! This is a miracle,' Sir Richard interrupted.
    'Nay, do not stop!' He leaned forward, and the shadows
    of the leaves slipped and slid upon his chain-mail.

         "'I ploughed the land with horses,
         But my heart was ill at ease,
         For the old seafaring men
         Came to me now and then
         With their sagas of the seas."'

    His hand fell on the hilt of the great sword. 'This is
    truth,' he cried, 'for so did it happen to me,' and he beat
    time delightedly to the tramp of verse after verse.

         "'And now the land," said Othere,
         "Bent southward suddenly,
         And I followed the curving shore,
         And ever southward bore
         Into a nameless sea."'

    'A nameless sea!' he repeated. 'So did I - so did Hugh and I.'

    'Where did you go? Tell us,' said Una.

    'Wait. Let me hear all first.' So Dan read to the poem's
    very end.

    'Good,' said the knight. 'That is Othere's tale - even so
    I have heard the men in the Dane ships sing it. Not
    those same valiant words, but something like to them.'

    'Have you ever explored North?' Dan shut the book.

    'Nay. My venture was South. Farther South than any
    man has fared, Hugh and I went down with Witta and his
    heathen.' He jerked the tall sword forward, and leaned
    on it with both hands; but his eyes looked long past them.

    'I thought you always lived here,' said Una, timidly.

    'Yes; while my Lady Aelueva lived. But she died. She
    died. Then, my eldest son being a man, I asked
    De Aquila's leave that he should hold the Manor while I
    went on some journey or pilgrimage - to forget.
    De Aquila, whom the Second William had made Warden of
    Pevensey in Earl Mortain's place, was very old then, but
    still he rode his tall, roan horses, and in the saddle
    he looked like a little white falcon. When Hugh, at
    Dallington, over yonder, heard what I did, he sent for my
    second son, whom being unmarried he had ever looked
    upon as his own child, and, by De Aquila's leave, gave
    him the Manor of Dallington to hold till he should return.
    Then Hugh came with me.'

    'When did this happen?' said Dan.

    'That I can answer to the very day, for as we rode with
    De Aquila by Pevensey - have I said that he was Lord of
    Pevensey and of the Honour of the Eagle? - to the
    Bordeaux ship that fetched him his wines yearly out of
    France, a Marsh man ran to us crying that he had seen a
    great black goat which bore on his back the body of the
    King, and that the goat had spoken to him. On that same
    day Red William our King, the Conqueror's son, died of a
    secret arrow while he hunted in a forest. "This is a cross
    matter," said De Aquila, "to meet on the threshold of a
    journey. If Red William be dead I may have to fight for my
    lands. Wait a little."

    'My Lady being dead, I cared nothing for signs and
    omens, nor Hugh either. We took that wine-ship to go to
    Bordeaux; but the wind failed while we were yet in sight
    of Pevensey, a thick mist hid us, and we drifted with the
    tide along the cliffs to the west. Our company was, for the
    most part, merchants returning to France, and we were
    laden with wool and there were three couple of tall
    hunting-dogs chained to the rail. Their master was a
    knight of Artois. His name I never learned, but his shield
    bore gold pieces on a red ground, and he limped, much
    as I do, from a wound which he had got in his youth at
    Mantes siege. He served the Duke of Burgundy against
    the Moors in Spain, and was returning to that war with
    his dogs. He sang us strange Moorish songs that first
    night, and half persuaded us to go with him. I was on
    pilgrimage to forget - which is what no pilgrimage
    brings. I think I would have gone, but ...

    'Look you how the life and fortune of man changes!
    Towards morning a Dane ship, rowing silently, struck
    against us in the mist, and while we rolled hither and yon
    Hugh, leaning over the rail, fell outboard. I leaped after
    him, and we two tumbled aboard the Dane, and were
    caught and bound ere we could rise. Our own ship was
    swallowed up in the mist. I judge the Knight of the Gold
    Pieces muzzled his dogs with his cloak, lest they should
    give tongue and betray the merchants, for I heard their
    baying suddenly stop.

    'We lay bound among the benches till morning, when
    the Danes dragged us to the high deck by the steering-
    place, and their captain - Witta, he was called - turned us
    over with his foot. Bracelets of gold from elbow to armpit
    he wore, and his red hair was long as a woman's, and
    came down in plaited locks on his shoulder. He was
    stout, with bowed legs and long arms. He spoiled us of all
    we had, but when he laid hand on Hugh's sword and saw
    the runes on the blade hastily he thrust it back. Yet his
    covetousness overcame him and he tried again and
    again, and the third time the Sword sang loud and
    angrily, so that the rowers leaned on their oars to listen.
    Here they all spoke together, screaming like gulls, and a
    Yellow Man, such as I have never seen, came to the high
    deck and cut our bonds. He was yellow - not from
    sickness, but by nature - yellow as honey, and his eyes
    stood endwise in his head.'

    'How do you mean?' said Una, her chin on her hand.

    'Thus,' said Sir Richard. He put a finger to the corner of
    each eye, and pushed it up till his eyes narrowed to slits.

    'Why, you look just like a Chinaman!' cried Dan. 'Was
    the man a Chinaman?'

    'I know not what that may be. Witta had found him
    half dead among ice on the shores of Muscovy. We
    thought he was a devil. He crawled before us and
    brought food in a silver dish which these sea-wolves had
    robbed from some rich abbey, and Witta with his own
    hands gave us wine. He spoke a little in French, a little in
    South Saxon, and much in the Northman's tongue. We
    asked him to set us ashore, promising to pay him better
    ransom than he would get price if he sold us to the Moors
    - as once befell a knight of my acquaintance sailing
    from Flushing.

    "'Not by my father Guthrum's head," said he. "The
    Gods sent ye into my ship for a luck-offering."

    'At this I quaked, for I knew it was still the Danes'
    custom to sacrifice captives to their Gods for fair weather.

    "'A plague on thy four long bones!" said Hugh. "What
    profit canst thou make of poor old pilgrims that can
    neither work nor fight?"

    "'Gods forbid I should fight against thee, poor Pilgrim
    with the Singing Sword," said he. "Come with us and be
    poor no more. Thy teeth are far apart, which is a sure sign
    thou wilt travel and grow rich."

    "'What if we will not come?" said Hugh.
    "'Swim to England or France," said Witta. "We are
    midway between the two. Unless ye choose to drown
    yourselves no hair of your head will be harmed here
    aboard. We think ye bring us luck, and I myself know the
    runes on that Sword are good." He turned and bade
    them hoist sail.

    'Hereafter all made way for us as we walked about the
    ship, and the ship was full of wonders.'

    'What was she like?' said Dan.

    'Long, low, and narrow, bearing one mast with a red
    sail, and rowed by fifteen oars a side,' the knight
    answered. 'At her bows was a deck under which men
    might lie, and at her stern another shut off by a painted
    door from the rowers' benches. Here Hugh and I slept,
    with Witta and the Yellow Man, upon tapestries as soft as
    wool. I remember' - he laughed to himself -'when first
    we entered there a loud voice cried, "Out swords! Out
    swords! Kill, kill!" Seeing us start Witta laughed, and
    showed us it was but a great-beaked grey bird with a red
    tail. He sat her on his shoulder, and she called for bread
    and wine hoarsely, and prayed him to kiss her. Yet she
    was no more than a silly bird. But - ye knew this?' He
    looked at their smiling faces.

    'We weren't laughing at you,' said Una. 'That must
    have been a parrot. It's just what Pollies do.'

    'So we learned later. But here is another marvel. The
    Yellow Man, whose name was Kitai, had with him a
    brown box. In the box was a blue bowl with red marks
    upon the rim, and within the bowl, hanging from a fine
    thread, was a piece of iron no thicker than that grass
    stem, and as long, maybe, as my spur, but straight. In
    this iron, said Witta, abode an Evil Spirit which Kitai, the
    Yellow Man, had brought by Art Magic out of his own
    country that lay three years' journey southward. The Evil
    Spirit strove day and night to return to his country, and
    therefore, look you, the iron needle pointed continually
    to the South.'

    'South?' said Dan suddenly, and put his hand into
    his pocket.

    'With my own eyes I saw it. Every day and all day long,
    though the ship rolled, though the sun and the moon and
    the stars were hid, this blind Spirit in the iron knew
    whither it would go, and strained to the South. Witta
    called it the Wise Iron, because it showed him his way
    across the unknowable seas.' Again Sir Richard looked
    keenly at the children. 'How think ye? Was it sorcery?'

    'Was it anything like this?' Dan fished out his old brass
    pocket-compass, that generally lived with his knife and
    key-ring. 'The glass has got cracked, but the needle
    waggles all right, sir.'

    The knight drew a long breath of wonder. 'Yes, yes!
    The Wise Iron shook and swung in just this fashion. Now
    it is still. Now it points to the South.'

    'North,' said Dan.

    'Nay, South! There is the South,'said Sir Richard. Then
    they both laughed, for naturally when one end of a
    straight compass-needle points to the North, the other
    must point to the South.

    'Te,' said Sir Richard, clicking his tongue. 'There can be
    no sorcery if a child carries it. Wherefore does it point
    South - or North?'

    'Father says that nobody knows,' said Una.

    Sir Richard looked relieved. 'Then it may still be magic.
    It was magic to us. And so we voyaged. When the wind
    served we hoisted sail, and lay all up along the windward
    rail, our shields on our backs to break the spray. When it
    failed, they rowed with long oars; the Yellow Man sat by
    the Wise Iron, and Witta steered. At first I feared the
    great white-flowering waves, but as I saw how wisely
    Witta led his ship among them I grew bolder. Hugh liked
    it well from the first. My skill is not upon the water; and
    rocks and whirlpools such as we saw by the West Isles of
    France, where an oar caught on a rock and broke, are
    much against my stomach. We sailed South across a
    stormy sea, where by moonlight, between clouds, we saw
    a Flanders ship roll clean over and sink. Again, though
    Hugh laboured with Witta all night, I lay under the deck
    with the Talking Bird, and cared not whether I lived or
    died. There is a sickness of the sea which for three days is
    pure death! When we next saw land Witta said it was
    Spain, and we stood out to sea. That coast was full of
    ships busy in the Duke's war against the Moors, and we
    feared to be hanged by the Duke's men or sold into
    slavery by the Moors. So we put into a small harbour
    which Witta knew. At night men came down with loaded
    mules, and Witta exchanged amber out of the North
    against little wedges of iron and packets of beads in
    earthen pots. The pots he put under the decks, and the
    wedges of iron he laid on the bottom of the ship after he
    had cast out the stones and shingle which till then had
    been our ballast. Wine, too, he bought for lumps of
    sweet-smelling grey amber - a little morsel no bigger than
    a thumb-nail purchased a cask of wine. But I speak like a
    merchant.'
    'No, no! Tell us what you had to eat,' cried Dan.

    'Meat dried in the sun, and dried fish and ground
    beans, Witta took in; and corded frails of a certain sweet,
    soft fruit, which the Moors use, which is like paste of figs,
    but with thin, long stones. Aha! Dates is the name.

    "'Now," said Witta, when the ship was loaded, "I
    counsel you strangers to pray to your Gods, for, from
    here on, our road is No Man's road." He and his men
    killed a black goat for sacrifice on the bows; and the
    Yellow Man brought out a small, smiling image of dull-
    green stone and burned incense before it. Hugh and I
    commended ourselves to God, and Saint Barnabas, and
    Our Lady of the Assumption, who was specially dear to
    my Lady. We were not young, but I think no shame to say
    whenas we drove out of that secret harbour at sunrise
    over a still sea, we two rejoiced and sang as did the
    knights of old when they followed our great Duke to
    England. Yet was our leader an heathen pirate; all our
    proud fleet but one galley perilously overloaded; for
    guidance we leaned on a pagan sorcerer; and our port
    was beyond the world's end. Witta told us that his father
    Guthrum had once in his life rowed along the shores of
    Africa to a land where naked men sold gold for iron and
    beads. There had he bought much gold, and no few
    elephants' teeth, and thither by help of the Wise Iron
    would Witta go. Witta feared nothing - except to be poor.

    "'My father told me," said Witta, "that a great Shoal
    runs three days' sail out from that land, and south of the
    shoal lies a Forest which grows in the sea. South and east
    of the Forest my father came to a place where the men hid
    gold in their hair; but all that country, he said, was full of
    Devils who lived in trees, and tore folk limb from limb.
    How think ye?"

    "'Gold or no gold," said Hugh, fingering his sword, "it
    is a joyous venture. Have at these Devils of thine, Witta!"

    "'Venture!" said Witta sourly. "I am only a poor
    sea-thief. I do not set my life adrift on a plank for joy, or
    the venture. Once I beach ship again at Stavanger, and
    feel the wife's arms round my neck, I'll seek no more
    ventures. A ship is heavier care than a wife or cattle."

    'He leaped down among the rowers, chiding them for
    their little strength and their great stomachs. Yet Witta
    was a wolf in fight, and a very fox in cunning.

    'We were driven South by a storm, and for three days
    and three nights he took the stern-oar, and threddled the
    longship through the sea. When it rose beyond measure
    he brake a pot of whale's oil upon the water, which
    wonderfully smoothed it, and in that anointed patch he
    turned her head to the wind and threw out oars at the end
    of a rope, to make, he said, an anchor at which we lay
    rolling sorely, but dry. This craft his father Guthrum had
    shown him. He knew, too, all the Leech-Book of Bald,
    who was a wise doctor, and he knew the Ship-Book of
    Hlaf the Woman, who robbed Egypt. He knew all the
    care of a ship.

    'After the storm we saw a mountain whose top was
    covered with snow and pierced the clouds. The grasses
    under this mountain, boiled and eaten, are a good cure
    for soreness of the gums and swelled ankles. We lay there
    eight days, till men in skins threw stones at us. When the
    heat increased Witta spread a cloth on bent sticks above
    the rowers, for the wind failed between the Island of the
    Mountain and the shore of Africa, which is east of it. That
    shore is sandy, and we rowed along it within three
    bowshots. Here we saw whales, and fish in the shape of
    shields, but longer than our ship. Some slept, some
    opened their mouths at us, and some danced on the hot
    waters. The water was hot to the hand, and the sky was
    hidden by hot, grey mists, out of which blew a fine dust
    that whitened our hair and beards of a morning. Here,
    too, were fish that flew in the air like birds. They would
    fall on the laps of the rowers, and when we went ashore
    we would roast and eat them.'

    The knight paused to see if the children doubted him,
    but they only nodded and said, 'Go on.'

    'The yellow land lay on our left, the grey sea on our
    right. Knight though I was, I pulled my oar amongst the
    rowers. I caught seaweed and dried it, and stuffed it
    between the pots of beads lest they should break. Knighthood
    is for the land. At sea, look you, a man is but a
    spurless rider on a bridleless horse. I learned to make
    strong knots in ropes - yes, and to join two ropes end to
    end, so that even Witta could scarcely see where they had
    been married. But Hugh had tenfold more sea-cunning
    than I. Witta gave him charge of the rowers of the left
    side. Thorkild of Borkum, a man with a broken nose, that
    wore a Norman steel cap, had the rowers of the right, and
    each side rowed and sang against the other. They saw
    that no man Was idle. Truly, as Hugh said, and Witta
    would laugh at him, a ship is all more care than a Manor.

    'How? Thus. There was water to fetch from the shore
    when we could find it, as well as wild fruit and grasses,
    and sand for scrubbing of the decks and benches to keep
    them sweet. Also we hauled the ship out on low islands
    and emptied all her gear, even to the iron wedges, and
    burned off the weed, that had grown on her, with torches
    of rush, and smoked below the decks with rushes
    dampened in salt water, as Hlaf the Woman orders in her
    Ship-Book. Once when we were thus stripped, and the
    ship lay propped on her keel, the bird cried, "Out
    swords!" as though she saw an enemy. Witta vowed he
    would wring her neck.'

    'Poor Polly! Did he?' said Una.

    'Nay. She was the ship's bird. She could call all the
    rowers by name ... Those were good days - for a
    wifeless man - with Witta and his heathen - beyond the
    world's end ... After many weeks we came on the great
    Shoal which stretched, as Witta's father had said, far out
    to sea. We skirted it till we were giddy with the sight and
    dizzy with the sound of bars and breakers, and when we
    reached land again we found a naked black people dwelling
    among woods, who for one wedge of iron loaded us
    with fruits and grasses and eggs. Witta scratched his
    head at them in sign he would buy gold. They had no
    gold, but they understood the sign (all the gold-traders
    hide their gold in their thick hair), for they pointed along
    the coast. They beat, too, on their chests with their
    clenched hands, and that, if we had known it, was an evil sign.'

    'What did it mean?' said Dan.

    'Patience. Ye shall hear. We followed the coast eastward
    sixteen days (counting time by sword-cuts on the
    helm-rail) till we came to the Forest in the Sea. Trees grew
    there out of mud, arched upon lean and high roots, and
    many muddy waterways ran allwhither into darkness,
    under the trees. Here we lost the sun. We followed the
    winding channels between the trees, and where we
    could not row we laid hold of the crusted roots and
    hauled ourselves along. The water was foul, and great
    glittering flies tormented us. Morning and evening a blue
    mist covered the mud, which bred fevers. Four of our
    rowers sickened, and were bound to their benches, lest
    they should leap overboard and be eaten by the monsters
    of the mud. The Yellow Man lay sick beside the Wise
    Iron, rolling his head and talking in his own tongue. Only
    the Bird throve. She sat on Witta's shoulder and screamed
    in that noisome, silent darkness. Yes; I think it was the
    silence we most feared.'

    He paused to listen to the comfortable home noises of
    the brook.

    'When we had lost count of time among those black
    gullies and swashes we heard, as it were, a drum beat far
    off, and following it we broke into a broad, brown river
    by a hut in a clearing among fields of pumpkins. We
    thanked God to see the sun again. The people of the
    village gave the good welcome, and Witta scratched his
    head at them (for gold), and showed them our iron and
    beads. They ran to the bank - we were still in the ship -
    and pointed to our swords and bows, for always when
    near shore we lay armed. Soon they fetched store of gold
    in bars and in dust from their huts, and some great
    blackened elephants' teeth. These they piled on the
    bank, as though to tempt us, and made signs of dealing
    blows in battle, and pointed up to the tree-tops, and to
    the forest behind. Their captain or chief sorcerer then
    beat on his chest with his fists, and gnashed his teeth.

    'Said Thorkild of Borkum: "Do they mean we must
    fight for all this gear?" and he half drew sword.

    "'Nay," said Hugh. "I think they ask us to league
    against some enemy."

    "'I like this not," said Witta, of a sudden. "Back into
    mid-stream."

    'So we did, and sat still all, watching the black folk and
    the gold they piled on the bank. Again we heard drums
    beat in the forest, and the people fled to their huts,
    leaving the gold unguarded.

    'Then Hugh, at the bows, pointed without speech, and
    we saw a great Devil come out of the forest. He shaded
    his brows with his hand, and moistened his pink tongue
    between his lips - thus.'

    'A Devil!' said Dan, delightfully horrified.

    'Yea. Taller than a man; covered with reddish hair.
    When he had well regarded our ship, he beat on his chest
    with his fists till it sounded like rolling drums, and came
    to the bank swinging all his body between his long arms,
    and gnashed his teeth at us. Hugh loosed arrow, and
    pierced him through the throat. He fell roaring, and three
    other Devils ran out of the forest and hauled him into a
    tall tree out of sight. Anon they cast down the blood-
    stained arrow, and lamented together among the leaves.

    Witta saw the gold on the bank; he was loath to leave it.
    "Sirs," said he (no man had spoken till then), "yonder is
    what we have come so far and so painfully to find, laid
    out to our very hand. Let us row in while these Devils
    bewail themselves, and at least bear off what we may."

    'Bold as a wolf, cunning as a fox was Witta! He set four
    archers on the fore-deck to shoot the Devils if they should
    leap from the tree, which was close to the bank. He
    manned ten oars a side, and bade them watch his hand to
    row in or back out, and so coaxed he them toward the
    bank. But none would set foot ashore, though the gold
    was within ten paces. No man is hasty to his hanging!
    They whimpered at their oars like beaten hounds, and
    Witta bit his fingers for rage.

    'Said Hugh of a sudden, "Hark!" At first we thought it
    was the buzzing of the glittering flies on the water; but it
    grew loud and fierce, so that all men heard.'

    'What?' said Dan and Una.

    'It was the Sword.' Sir Richard patted the smooth hilt.
    'It sang as a Dane sings before battle. "I go," said Hugh,
    and he leaped from the bows and fell among the gold. I
    was afraid to my four bones' marrow, but for shame's
    sake I followed, and Thorkild of Borkum leaped after me.
    None other came. "Blame me not," cried Witta behind
    us, "I must abide by my ship." We three had no time to
    blame or praise. We stooped to the gold and threw it back
    over our shoulders, one hand on our swords and one eye
    on the tree, which nigh overhung us.

    'I know not how the Devils leaped down, or how the
    fight began. I heard Hugh cry: "Out! out!" as though he
    were at Santlache again; I saw Thorkild's steel cap smitten
    off his head by a great hairy hand, and I felt an arrow
    from the ship whistle past my ear. They say that till Witta
    took his sword to the rowers he could not bring his ship
    inshore; and each one of the four archers said afterwards
    that he alone had pierced the Devil that fought me. I do
    not know. I went to it in my mail-shirt, which saved my
    skin. With long-sword and belt-dagger I fought for the
    life against a Devil whose very feet were hands, and who
    whirled me back and forth like a dead branch. He had me
    by the waist, my arms to my side, when an arrow from
    the ship pierced him between the shoulders, and he
    loosened grip. I passed my sword twice through him,
    and he crutched himself away between his long arms,
    coughing and moaning. Next, as I remember, I saw
    Thorkild of Borkum, bare-headed and smiling, leaping
    up and down before a Devil that leaped and gnashed his
    teeth. Then Hugh passed, his sword shifted to his left
    hand, and I wondered why I had not known that Hugh
    was a left-handed man; and thereafter I remembered
    nothing till I felt spray on my face, and we were in
    sunshine on the open sea. That was twenty days after.'

    'What had happened? Did Hugh die?'the children asked.

    'Never was such a fight fought by christened man,'
    said Sir Richard. 'An arrow from the ship had saved me
    from my Devil, and Thorkild of Borkum had given back
    before his Devil, till the bowmen on the ship could shoot
    it all full of arrows from near by; but Hugh's Devil was
    cunning, and had kept behind trees, where no arrow
    could reach. Body to body there, by stark strength of
    sword and hand, had Hugh slain him, and, dying, the
    Thing had clenched his teeth on the sword. Judge what
    teeth they were!'

    Sir Richard turned the sword again that the children
    might see the two great chiselled gouges on either side of
    the blade.

    'Those same teeth met in Hugh's right arm and side,'
    Sir Richard went on. 'I? Oh, I had no more than a broken
    foot and a fever. Thorkild's ear was bitten, but Hugh's
    arm and side clean withered away. I saw him where he
    lay along, sucking a fruit in his left hand. His flesh was
    wasted off his bones, his hair was patched with white,
    and his hand was blue-veined like a woman's. He put his
    left arm round my neck and whispered, "Take my sword.
    It has been thine since Hastings, O my brother, but I can
    never hold hilt again." We lay there on the high deck
    talking of Santlache, and, I think, of every day since
    Santlache, and it came so that we both wept. I was weak,
    and he little more than a shadow.

    "'Nay - nay," said Witta, at the helm-rail. "Gold is a
    good right arm to any man. Look - look at the gold!" He
    bade Thorkild show us the gold and the elephants' teeth,
    as though we had been children. He had brought away
    all the gold on the bank, and twice as much more, that the
    people of the village gave him for slaying the Devils.
    They worshipped us as Gods, Thorkild told me: it was
    one of their old women healed up Hugh's poor arm.'

    'How much gold did you get?'asked Dan.
    'How can I say? Where we came out with wedges of
    iron under the rowers' feet we returned with wedges of
    gold hidden beneath planks. There was dust of gold in
    packages where we slept and along the side, and cross-
    wise under the benches we lashed the blackened
    elephants' teeth.

    "'I had sooner have my right arm," said Hugh, when
    he had seen all.

    "'Ahai! That was my fault," said Witta. "I should have
    taken ransom and landed you in France when first you
    came aboard, ten months ago."

    "'It is over-late now," said Hugh, laughing.

    'Witta plucked at his long shoulder-lock. "But think!"
    said he. "If I had let ye go - which I swear I would never
    have done, for I love ye more than brothers - if I had let ye
    go, by now ye might have been horribly slain by some
    mere Moor in the Duke of Burgundy's war, or ye might
    have been murdered by land-thieves, or ye might have
    died of the plague at an inn. Think of this and do not
    blame me overmuch, Hugh. See! I will only take a half of
    the gold."

    "'I blame thee not at all, Witta," said Hugh. "It was a
    joyous venture, and we thirty-five here have done what
    never men have done. If I live till England, I will build me
    a stout keep over Dallington out of my share."

    "'I will buy cattle and amber and warm red cloth for the
    wife," said Witta, "and I will hold all the land at the head
    of Stavanger Fiord. Many will fight for me now. But first
    we must turn North, and with this honest treasure
    aboard I pray we meet no pirate ships."

    'We did not laugh. We were careful. We were afraid
    lest we should lose one grain of our gold, for which we
    had fought Devils.

    "'Where is the Sorcerer?" said I, for Witta was looking
    at the Wise Iron in the box, and I could not see the Yellow Man.

    "'He has gone to his own country," said he. "He rose
    up in the night while we were beating out of that forest in
    the mud, and said that he could see it behind the trees.
    He leaped out on the mud, and did not answer when we
    called; so we called no more. He left the Wise Iron, which
    is all that I care for - and see, the Spirit still points
    to the South."

    'We were troubled for fear that the Wise Iron should
    fail us now that its Yellow Man had gone, and when we
    saw the Spirit still served us we grew afraid of too strong
    winds, and of shoals, and of careless leaping fish, and of
    all the people on all the shores where we landed.'

    'Why?' said Dan.

    'Because of the gold - because of our gold. Gold
    changes men altogether. Thorkild of Borkum did not
    change. He laughed at Witta for his fears, and at us for
    our counselling Witta to furl sail when the ship pitched at all.

    "'Better be drowned out of hand," said Thorkild of
    Borkum, "than go tied to a deck-load of yellow dust."

    'He was a landless man, and had been slave to some
    King in the East. He would have beaten out the gold into
    deep bands to put round the oars, and round the prow.

    'Yet, though he vexed himself for the gold, Witta
    waited upon Hugh like a woman, lending him his shoulder
    when the ship rolled, and tying of ropes from side to
    side that Hugh might hold by them. But for Hugh, he
    said - and so did all his men - they would never have won
    the gold. I remember Witta made a little, thin gold ring
    for our Bird to swing in.

    'Three months we rowed and sailed and went ashore
    for fruits or to clean the ship. When we saw wild horsemen,
    riding among sand-dunes, flourishing spears, we
    knew we were on the Moors' coast, and stood over north
    to Spain; and a strong south-west wind bore us in ten
    days to a coast of high red rocks, where we heard a
    hunting-horn blow among the yellow gorse and knew it
    was England.

    "'Now find ye Pevensey yourselves," said Witta. "I
    love not these narrow ship-filled seas."

    'He set the dried, salted head of the Devil, which Hugh
    had killed, high on our prow, and all boats fled from us.
    Yet, for our gold's sake, we were more afraid than they.
    We crept along the coast by night till we came to the chalk
    cliffs, and so east to Pevensey. Witta would not come
    ashore with us, though Hugh promised him wine at
    Dallington enough to swim in. He was on fire to see his
    wife, and ran into the Marsh after sunset, and there he
    left us and our share of gold, and backed out on the same
    tide. He made no promise; he swore no oath; he looked
    for no thanks; but to Hugh, an armless man, and to me,
    an old cripple whom he could have flung into the sea, he
    passed over wedge upon wedge, packet upon packet of
    gold and dust of gold, and only ceased when we would
    take no more. As he stooped from the rail to bid us
    farewell he stripped off his right-arm bracelets and put
    them all on Hugh's left, and he kissed Hugh on the
    cheek. I think when Thorkild of Borkum bade the rowers
    give way we were near weeping. It is true that Witta was
    an heathen and a pirate; true it is he held us by force
    many months in his ship, but I loved that bow-legged,
    blue-eyed man for his great boldness, his cunning, his
    skill, and, beyond all, for his simplicity.'

    'Did he get home all right?' said Dan.

    'I never knew. We saw him hoist sail under the moon-
    track and stand away. I have prayed that he found his
    wife and the children.'

    'And what did you do?'

    'We waited on the Marsh till the day. Then I sat by the
    gold, all tied in an old sail, while Hugh went to Pevensey,
    and De Aquila sent us horses.'

    Sir Richard crossed hands on his sword-hilt, and stared
    down stream through the soft warm shadows.

    'A whole shipload of gold!' said Una, looking at the
    little Golden Hind. 'But I'm glad I didn't see the Devils.'

    'I don't believe they were Devils,'Dan whispered back.

    'Eh?' said Sir Richard. 'Witta's father warned him they
    were unquestionable Devils. One must believe one's
    father, and not one's children. What were my Devils, then?'

    Dan flushed all over. 'I - I only thought,' he stammered;
    'I've got a book called The Gorilla Hunters - it's a
    continuation of Coral Island, sir - and it says there that the
    gorillas (they're big monkeys, you know) were always
    chewing iron up.'

    'Not always,' said Una. 'Only twice.' They had been
    reading The Gorilla Hunters in the orchard.

    'Well, anyhow, they always drummed on their chests,
    like Sir Richard's did, before they went for people. And
    they built houses in trees, too.'

    'Ha!' Sir Richard opened his eyes. 'Houses like flat
    nests did our Devils make, where their imps lay and
    looked at us. I did not see them (I was sick after the fight),
    but Witta told me, and, lo, ye know it also? Wonderful!
    Were our Devils only nest-building apes? Is there no
    sorcery left in the world?'

    'I don't know,' answered Dan, uncomfortably. 'I've
    seen a man take rabbits out of a hat, and he told us we
    could see how he did it, if we watched hard. And we did.'

    'But we didn't,' said Una, sighing. 'Oh! there's Puck!'

    The little fellow, brown and smiling, peered between
    two stems of an ash, nodded, and slid down the bank
    into the cool beside them.

    'No sorcery, Sir Richard?' he laughed, and blew on a
    full dandelion head he had picked.

    'They tell me that Witta's Wise Iron was a toy. The boy
    carries such an iron with him. They tell me our Devils
    were apes, called gorillas!' said Sir Richard, indignantly.

    'That is the sorcery of books,' said Puck. 'I warned thee
    they were wise children. All people can be wise by
    reading of books.'

    'But are the books true?' Sir Richard frowned. 'I like not
    all this reading and writing.'
    'Ye-es,' said Puck, holding the naked dandelion head
    at arm's length. 'But if we hang all fellows who write
    falsely, why did De Aquila not begin with Gilbert the
    Clerk? He was false enough.'

    'Poor false Gilbert. Yet, in his fashion, he was bold,'
    said Sir Richard.

    'What did he do?' said Dan.

    'He wrote,' said Sir Richard. 'Is the tale meet for
    children, think you?' He looked at Puck; but 'Tell us! Tell
    us!' cried Dan and Una together.



    Thorkild's Song




    There's no wind along these seas,
    Out oars for Stavanger!
    Forward all for Stavanger!
    So we must wake the white-ash breeze,
    Let fall for Stavanger!
    A long pull for Stavanger!

    Oh, hear the benches creak and strain!
    (A long pull for Stavanger!)
    She thinks she smells the Northland rain!
    (A long pull for Stavanger!)

    She thinks she smells the Northland snow,
    And she's as glad as we to go.

    She thinks she smells the Northland rime,
    And the dear dark nights of winter-time.

    Her very bolts are sick for shore,
    And we - we want it ten times more!

    So all you Gods that love brave men,
    Send us a three-reef gale again!

    Send us a gale, and watch us come,
    With close-cropped canvas slashing home!

    But - there's no wind in all these seas.
      A long pull for Stavanger!
    So we must wake the white-ash breeze,
      A long pull for Stavanger!




    OLD MEN AT PEVENSEY





    'It has naught to do with apes or Devils,'Sir Richard went
    on, in an undertone. 'It concerns De Aquila, than whom
    there was never bolder nor craftier, nor more hardy
    knight born. And remember he was an old, old man at
    that time.'

    'When?' said Dan.

    'When we came back from sailing with Witta.'

    'What did you do with your gold?' said Dan.

    'Have patience. Link by link is chain-mail made. I will
    tell all in its place. We bore the gold to Pevensey on
    horseback - three loads of it - and then up to the north
    chamber, above the Great Hall of Pevensey Castle, where
    De Aquila lay in winter. He sat on his bed like a little
    white falcon, turning his head swiftly from one to the
    other as we told our tale. Jehan the Crab, an old sour
    man-at-arms, guarded the stairway, but De Aquila bade
    him wait at the stair-foot, and let down both leather
    curtains over the door. It was jehan whom De Aquila had
    sent to us with the horses, and only Jehan had loaded the
    gold. When our story was told, De Aquila gave us the
    news of England, for we were as men waked from a
    year-long sleep. The Red King was dead - slain (ye
    remember?) the day we set sail - and Henry, his younger
    brother, had made himself King of England over the head
    of Robert of Normandy. This was the very thing that the
    Red King had done to Robert when our Great William
    died. Then Robert of Normandy, mad, as De Aquila said,
    at twice missing of this kingdom, had sent an army
    against England, which army had been well beaten back
    to their ships at Portsmouth. A little earlier, and Witta's
    ship would have rowed through them.

    "'And now," said De Aquila, "half the great Barons of
    the North and West are out against the King between
    Salisbury and Shrewsbury, and half the other half wait
    to see which way the game shall go. They say Henry
    is overly English for their stomachs, because he hath
    married an English wife and she hath coaxed him to give
    back their old laws to our Saxons. (Better ride a horse on
    the bit he knows, I say!) But that is only a cloak to their
    falsehood." He cracked his finger on the table, where
    the wine was spilt, and thus he spoke:

    "'William crammed us Norman barons full of good
    English acres after Santlache. I had my share too," he
    said, and clapped Hugh on the shoulder; "but I warned
    him - I warned him before Odo rebelled - that he should
    have bidden the Barons give up their lands and lordships
    in Normandy if they would be English lords. Now they
    are all but princes both in England and Normandy -
    trencher-fed hounds, with a foot in one trough and both
    eyes on the other! Robert of Normandy has sent them
    word that if they do not fight for him in England he will
    sack and harry out their lands in Normandy. Therefore
    Clare has risen, FitzOsborne has risen, Montgomery has
    risen - whom our First William made an English Earl.
    Even D'Arcy is out with his men, whose father I remember -
    a little hedge-sparrow knight near by Caen. If Henry
    wins, the Barons can still flee to Normandy, where
    Robert will welcome them. If Henry loses, Robert, he
    says, will give them more lands in England. Oh, a pest - a
    pest on Normandy, for she will be our England's curse
    this many a long year!"

    "'Amen," said Hugh. "But will the war come our
    ways, think you?"

    "'Not from the North," said De Aquila. "But the sea is
    always open. If the Barons gain the upper hand Robert
    will send another army into England for sure, and this
    time I think he will land here - where his father, the
    Conqueror, landed. Ye have brought your pigs to a pretty
    market! Half England alight, and gold enough on the
    ground" - he stamped on the bars beneath the table - "to
    set every sword in Christendom fighting."

    "'What is to do?" said Hugh. "I have no keep at
    Dallington; and if we buried it, whom could we trust?"
    "'Me," said De Aquila. "Pevensey walls are strong. No
    man but jehan, who is my dog, knows what is between
    them." He drew a curtain by the shot-window and
    showed us the shaft of a well in the thickness of the wall.

    "'I made it for a drinking-well," he said, "but we found
    salt water, and it rises and falls with the tide. Hark!" We
    heard the water whistle and blow at the bottom. "Will it
    serve?" said he.

    "'Needs must," said Hugh. "Our lives are in thy
    hands." So we lowered all the gold down except one
    small chest of it by De Aquila's bed, which we kept as
    much for his delight in its weight and colour as for any of
    our needs.

    'In the morning, ere we rode to our Manors, he said: "I
    do not say farewell; because ye will return and bide here.
    Not for love nor for sorrow, but to be with the gold. Have
    a care," he said, laughing, "lest I use it to make myself
    Pope. Trust me not, but return!"'

    Sir Richard paused and smiled sadly.

    'In seven days, then, we returned from our Manors -
    from the Manors which had been ours.'

    'And were the children quite well?' said Una.

    'My sons were young. Land and governance belong by
    right to young men.' Sir Richard was talking to himself.
    'It would have broken their hearts if we had taken back
    our Manors. They made us great welcome, but we could
    see - Hugh and I could see - that our day was done. I was
    a cripple and he a one-armed man. No!' He shook his
    head. 'And therefore' - he raised his voice - 'we rode
    back to Pevensey.'

    'I'm sorry,' said Una, for the knight seemed very sorrowful.

    'Little maid, it all passed long ago. They were young;
    we were old. We let them rule the Manors. "Aha!" cried
    De Aquila from his shot-window, when we dismounted.
    "Back again to earth, old foxes?" but when we were in his
    chamber above the Hall he puts his arms about us and
    says, "Welcome, ghosts! Welcome, poor ghosts!"

    Thus it fell out that we were rich beyond belief, and
    lonely. And lonely!'

    'What did you do?' said Dan.

    'We watched for Robert of Normandy,' said the knight.
    'De Aquila was like Witta. He suffered no idleness. In fair
    weather we would ride along between Bexlei on the one
    side, to Cuckmere on the other - sometimes with hawk,
    sometimes with hound (there are stout hares both on the
    Marsh and the Downland), but always with an eye to the
    sea, for fear of fleets from Normandy. In foul weather he
    would walk on the top of his tower, frowning against the
    rain - peering here and pointing there. It always vexed
    him to think how Witta's ship had come and gone
    without his knowledge. When the wind ceased and ships
    anchored, to the wharf's edge he would go and, leaning
    on his sword among the stinking fish, would call to the
    mariners for their news from France. His other eye he
    kept landward for word of Henry's war against the Barons.

    'Many brought him news - jongleurs, harpers, pedlars,
    sutlers, priests and the like; and, though he was
    secret enough in small things, yet, if their news misliked
    him, then, regarding neither time nor place nor people,
    he would curse our King Henry for a fool or a babe. I have
    heard him cry aloud by the fishing boats: "If I were King
    of England I would do thus and thus"; and when I rode
    out to see that the warning-beacons were laid and dry, he
    hath often called to me from the shot-window: "Look
    to it, Richard! Do not copy our blind King, but see
    with thine own eyes and feel with thine own hands."
    I do not think he knew any sort of fear. And so
    we lived at Pevensey, in the little chamber above the Hall.

    'One foul night came word that a messenger of the
    King waited below. We were chilled after a long riding in
    the fog towards Bexlei, which is an easy place for ships to
    land. De Aquila sent word the man might either eat with
    us or wait till we had fed. Anon jehan, at the stair-head,
    cried that he had called for horse, and was gone. "Pest on
    him!" said De Aquila. "I have more to do than to shiver in
    the Great Hall for every gadling the King sends. Left he
    no word?"

    "'None," said Jehan, "except" - he had been with De
    Aquila at Santlache - "except he said that if an old dog
    could not learn new tricks it was time to sweep out the kennel."

    "'Oho!" said De Aquila, rubbing his nose, "to whom
    did he say that?"

    "'To his beard, chiefly, but some to his horse's flank as
    he was girthing up. I followed him out," said jehan the Crab.

    "'What was his shield-mark?"

    "'Gold horseshoes on black," said the Crab.

    "'That is one of Fulke's men," said De Aquila.'

    Puck broke in very gently, 'Gold horseshoes on black is
    not the Fulkes' shield. The Fulkes' arms are -'

    The knight waved one hand statelily.

    'Thou knowest that evil man's true name,' he replied,
    'but I have chosen to call him Fulke because I promised
    him I would not tell the story of his wickedness so
    that any man might guess it. I have changed all the
    names in my tale. His children's children may be still alive.'

    'True - true,' said Puck, smiling softly. 'It is knightly to
    keep faith - even after a thousand years.'

    Sir Richard bowed a little and went on:

    "'Gold horseshoes on black?" said De Aquila. "I had
    heard Fulke had joined the Barons/ but if this is true our
    King must be of the upper hand. No matter, all Fulkes are
    faithless. Still, I would not have sent the man away empty."

    "'He fed," said jehan. "Gilbert the Clerk fetched him
    meat and wine from the kitchens. He ate at Gilbert's table."

    'This Gilbert was a clerk from Battle Abbey, who kept
    the accounts of the Manor of Pevensey. He was tall and
    pale-coloured, and carried those new-fashioned beads
    for counting of prayers. They were large brown nuts or
    seeds, and hanging from his girdle with his pen and
    ink-horn they clashed when he walked. His place was in
    the great fireplace. There was his table of accounts, and
    there he lay o' nights. He feared the hounds in the Hall
    that came nosing after bones or to sleep on the warm
    ashes, and would slash at them with his beads - like a
    woman. When De Aquila sat in Hall to do justice, take
    fines, or grant lands, Gilbert would so write it in the
    Manor-roll. But it was none of his work to feed our
    guests, or to let them depart without his lord's knowledge.

    'Said De Aquila, after jehan was gone down the stair:
    "Hugh, hast thou ever told my Gilbert thou canst read
    Latin hand-of-write?"

    "'No," said Hugh. "He is no friend to me, or to Odo
    my hound either."

    "'No matter," said De Aquila. "Let him never know thou canst
    tell one letter from its fellow, and" - there he yerked us in the
    ribs with his scabbard - "watch him, both of ye. There be devils
    in Africa, as I have heard, but by the Saints, there be greater
    devils in Pevensey!" And that was all he would say.

    'It chanced, some small while afterwards, a Norman
    man-at-arms would wed a Saxon wench of the Manor,
    and Gilbert (we had watched him well since De Aquila
    spoke) doubted whether her folk were free or slave. Since
    De Aquila would give them a field of good land, if she
    were free, the matter came up at the justice in Great Hall
    before De Aquila. First the wench's father spoke; then
    her mother; then all together, till the Hall rang and the
    hounds bayed. De Aquila held up his hands. "Write her
    free," he called to Gilbert by the fireplace. "A' God's
    name write her free, before she deafens me! Yes, yes," he
    said to the wench that was on her knees at him; "thou art
    Cerdic's sister, and own cousin to the Lady of Mercia, if
    thou wilt be silent. In fifty years there will be neither
    Norman nor Saxon, but all English," said he, "and these
    are the men that do our work!" He clapped the man-at-arms
    that was Jehan's nephew on the shoulder, and
    kissed the wench, and fretted with his feet among the
    rushes to show it was finished. (The Great Hall is always
    bitter cold.) I stood at his side; Hugh was behind Gilbert
    in the fireplace making to play with wise rough Odo. He
    signed to De Aquila, who bade Gilbert measure the new
    field for the new couple. Out then runs our Gilbert
    between man and maid, his beads clashing at his waist,
    and the Hall being empty, we three sit by the fire.

    'Said Hugh, leaning down to the hearthstones, "I saw
    this stone move under Gilbert's foot when Odo snuffed
    at it. Look!" De Aquila digged in the ashes with his
    sword; the stone tilted; beneath it lay a parchment folden,
    and the writing atop was: "Words spoken against
    the King by our Lord of Pevensey - the second part."

    'Here was set out (Hugh read it us whispering) every
    jest De Aquila had made to us touching the King; every
    time he had called out to me from the shot-window, and
    every time he had said what he would do if he were King
    of England. Yes, day by day had his daily speech, which
    he never stinted, been set down by Gilbert, tricked out
    and twisted from its true meaning, yet withal so cunningly
    that none could deny who knew him that De Aquila
    had in some sort spoken those words. Ye see?'

    Dan and Una nodded.

    'Yes,' said Una gravely. 'It isn't what you say so much.
    It's what you mean when you say it. Like calling Dan a
    beast in fun. Only grown-ups don't always understand.'

    "'He hath done this day by day before our very face?"
    said De Aquila.

    "'Nay, hour by hour," said Hugh. "When De Aquila
    spoke even now, in the Hall, of Saxons and Normans, I
    saw Gilbert write on a parchment, which he kept beside
    the Manor-roll, that De Aquila said soon there would be
    no Normans left in England if his men-at-arms did their
    work aright. "

    "'Bones of the Saints!" said De Aquila. "What avail is
    honour or a sword against a pen? Where did Gilbert hide
    that writing? He shall eat it."

    "'In his breast when he ran out," said Hugh. "Which
    made me look to see where he kept his finished stuff.
    When Odo scratched at this stone here, I saw his face
    change. So I was sure."

    "'He is bold," said De Aquila. "Do him justice. In his
    own fashion, my Gilbert is bold."

    "'Overbold," said Hugh. "Hearken here," and he
    read: "Upon the Feast of St Agatha, our Lord of Pevensey,
    lying in his upper chamber, being clothed in his
    second fur gown reversed with rabbit -"

    "'Pest on him! He is not my tire-woman!" said
    De Aquila, and Hugh and I laughed.
    "'Reversed with rabbit, seeing a fog over the marshes,
    did wake Sir Richard Dalyngridge, his drunken cup-
    mate" (here they laughed at me) "and said, 'Peer out, old
    fox, for God is on the Duke of Normandy's side."'

    "'So did I. It was a black fog. Robert could have landed
    ten thousand men, and we none the wiser. Does he tell
    how we were out all day riding the Marsh, and how I near
    perished in a quicksand, and coughed like a sick ewe for
    ten days after?" cried De Aquila.

    "'No," said Hugh. "But here is the prayer of Gilbert
    himself to his master Fulke."

    "'Ah," said De Aquila. "Well I knew it was Fulke.
    What is the price of my blood?"

    "'Gilbert prayeth that when our Lord of Pevensey is
    stripped of his lands on this evidence which Gilbert hath,
    with fear and pains, collected -"

    "'Fear and pains is a true word," said De Aquila, and
    sucked in his cheeks. "But how excellent a weapon is a
    pen! I must learn it."

    "'He prays that Fulke will advance him from his
    present service to that honour in the Church which Fulke
    promised him. And lest Fulke should forget, he has
    written below, 'To be Sacristan of Battle'."

    'At this De Aquila whistled. "A man who can plot
    against one lord can plot against another. When I am
    stripped of my lands Fulke will whip off my Gilbert's
    foolish head. None the less Battle needs a new Sacristan.
    They tell me the Abbot Henry keeps no sort of rule there."

    "'Let the Abbot wait," said Hugh. "It is our heads and
    our lands that are in danger. This parchment is the
    second part of the tale. The first has gone to Fulke, and so
    to the King, who will hold us traitors."

    "Assuredly," said De Aquila. "Fulke's man took the
    first part that evening when Gilbert fed him, and our
    King is so beset by his brother and his Barons (small
    blame, too!) that he is mad with mistrust. Fulke has his
    ear, and pours poison into it. Presently the King gives
    him my land and yours. This is old," and he leaned back
    and yawned.

    "'And thou wilt surrender Pevensey without word or
    blow?" said Hugh. "We Saxons will fight your King then.
    I will go warn my nephew at Dallington. Give me a horse!"

    "'Give thee a toy and a rattle," said De Aquila. "Put
    back the parchment, and rake over the ashes. If Fulke is
    given my Pevensey, which is England's gate, what will
    he do with it? He is Norman at heart, and his heart is in
    Normandy, where he can kill peasants at his pleasure.
    He will open England's gate to our sleepy Robert, as Odo
    and Mortain tried to do, and then there will be another
    landing and another Santlache. Therefore I cannot give
    up Pevensey."

    "'Good," said we two.

    "'Ah, but wait! If my King be made, on Gilbert's
    evidence, to mistrust me, he will send his men against
    me here, and while we fight, England's gate is left
    unguarded. Who will be the first to come through thereby?
    Even Robert of Normandy. Therefore I cannot fight my
    King." He nursed his sword - thus.

    "'This is saying and unsaying like a Norman," said
    Hugh. "What of our Manors?"

    "'I do not think for myself," said De Aquila, "nor for
    our King, nor for your lands. I think for England, for
    whom neither King nor Baron thinks. I am not Norman,
    Sir Richard, nor Saxon, Sir Hugh. English am I."

    "'Saxon, Norman or English," said Hugh, "our lives
    are thine, however the game goes. When do we hang Gilbert?"

    "'Never," said De Aquila. "Who knows, he may yet be
    Sacristan of Battle, for, to do him justice, he is a good
    writer. Dead men make dumb witnesses. Wait."

    "'But the King may give Pevensey to Fulke. And our
    Manors go with it," said I. "Shall we tell our sons?"

    "'No. The King will not wake up a hornets' nest in the
    South till he has smoked out the bees in the North. He
    may hold me a traitor; but at least he sees I am not
    fighting against him; and every day that I lie still is so
    much gain to him while he fights the Barons. If he were
    wise he would wait till that war were over before he made
    new enemies. But I think Fulke will play upon him to
    send for me, and if I do not obey the summons, that will,
    to Henry's mind, be proof of my treason. But mere talk,
    such as Gilbert sends, is no proof nowadays. We Barons
    follow the Church, and, like Anselm, we speak what we
    please. Let us go about our day's dealings, and say
    naught to Gilbert."

    "'Then we do nothing?" said Hugh.

    "'We wait," said De Aquila. "I am old, but still I find
    that the most grievous work I know."
    'And so we found it, but in the end De Aquila was right.

    'A little later in the year, armed men rode over the hill,
    the Golden Horseshoes flying behind the King's banner.
    Said De Aquila, at the window of our chamber: "How did
    I tell you? Here comes Fulke himself to spy out his new
    lands which our King hath promised him if he can bring
    proof of my treason."

    "'How dost thou know?" said Hugh.

    "'Because that is what I would do if I were Fulke, but I
    should have brought more men. My roan horse to your
    old shoes," said he, "Fulke brings me the King's Summons
    to leave Pevensey and join the war." He sucked in
    his cheeks and drummed on the edge of the well-shaft,
    where the water sounded all hollow.

    "'Shall we go?" said I.

    "'Go! At this time of year? Stark madness," said he.
    "Take me from Pevensey to fisk and flyte through fern
    and forest, and in three days Robert's keels would be
    lying on Pevensey mud with ten thousand men! Who
    would stop them - Fulke?"

    'The horns blew without, and anon Fulke cried the
    King's Summons at the great door, that De Aquila with
    all men and horse should join the King's camp
    at Salisbury.
    "'How did I tell you?" said De Aquila. "There are
    twenty Barons 'twixt here and Salisbury could give King
    Henry good land service, but he has been worked upon
    by Fulke to send South and call me - me! - off the Gate of
    England, when his enemies stand about to batter it in.
    See that Fulke's men lie in the big south barn," said he.
    "Give them drink, and when Fulke has eaten we will
    drink in my chamber. The Great Hall is too cold for old bones."

    'As soon as he was off-horse Fulke went to the chapel
    with Gilbert to give thanks for his safe coming, and when
    he had eaten - he was a fat man, and rolled his eyes
    greedily at our good roast Sussex wheat-ears - we led him
    to the little upper chamber, whither Gilbert had already
    gone with the Manor-roll. I remember when Fulke heard
    the tide blow and whistle in the shaft he leaped back, and
    his long down-turned stirrup-shoes caught in the rushes
    and he stumbled, so that Jehan behind him found it easy
    to knock his head against the wall.'

    'Did you know it was going to happen?' said Dan.

    'Assuredly,' said Sir Richard, with a sweet smile. 'I put
    my foot on his sword and plucked away his dagger, but
    he knew not whether it was day or night for awhile. He
    lay rolling his eyes and bubbling with his mouth, and
    jehan roped him like a calf. He was cased all in that
    newfangled armour which we call lizard-mail. Not rings
    like my hauberk here'- Sir Richard tapped his chest -but
    little pieces of dagger-proof steel overlapping on stout
    leather. We stripped it off (no need to spoil good harness
    by wetting it), and in the neck-piece De Aquila found the
    same folden piece of parchment which we had put back
    under the hearth-stone.

    'At this Gilbert would have run out. I laid my hand on
    his shoulder. It sufficed. He fell to trembling and praying
    on his beads.

    "'Gilbert," said De Aquila, "here be more notable
    sayings and doings of our Lord of Pevensey for thee to
    write down. Take pen and ink-horn, Gilbert. We cannot
    all be Sacristans of Battle."

    'Said Fulke from the floor, "Ye have bound a King's
    messenger. Pevensey shall burn for this."

    "'Maybe. I have seen it besieged once," said
    De Aquila, "but heart up, Fulke. I promise thee that thou
    shalt be hanged in the middle of the flames at the end of
    that siege, if I have to share my last loaf with thee; and
    that is more than Odo would have done when we starved
    out him and Mortain."

    'Then Fulke sat up and looked long and cunningly at De Aquila.

    "'By the Saints," said he, "why didst thou not say thou
    wast on the Duke Robert's side at the first?"

    "'Am I?" said De Aquila.

    'Fulke laughed and said, "No man who serves King
    Henry dare do this much to his messenger. When didst
    thou come over to the Duke? Let me up and we can
    smooth it out together." And he smiled and becked and winked.

    "'Yes, we will smooth it out," said De Aquila. He
    nodded to me, and jehan and I heaved up Fulke - he
    was a heavy man - and lowered him into the shaft by a
    rope, not so as to stand on our gold, but dangling by
    his shoulders a little above. It was turn of ebb, and the
    water came to his knees. He said nothing, but shivered somewhat.

    'Then jehan of a sudden beat down Gilbert's wrist with
    his sheathed dagger. "Stop!" he said. "He swallows his beads."

    "'Poison, belike," said De Aquila. "It is good for men
    who know too much. I have carried it these thirty years.
    Give me!"

    'Then Gilbert wept and howled. De Aquila ran the
    beads through his fingers. The last one - I have said they
    were large nuts - opened in two halves on a pin, and there
    was a small folded parchment within. On it was written:
    "The Old Dog goes to Salisbury to be beaten. I have his Kennel.
    Come quickly.

    "'This is worse than poison," said De Aquila very
    softly, and sucked in his cheeks. Then Gilbert grovelled
    in the rushes, and told us all he knew. The letter, as we
    guessed, was from Fulke to the Duke (and not the first
    that had passed between them); Fulke had given it to
    Gilbert in the chapel, and Gilbert thought to have taken it
    by morning to a certain fishing boat at the wharf, which
    trafficked between Pevensey and the French shore. Gilbert
    was a false fellow, but he found time between his
    quakings and shakings to swear that the master of the
    boat knew nothing of the matter.

    "'He hath called me shaved-head," said Gilbert, "and he hath
    thrown haddock-guts at me; but for all that, he is no traitor."

    "'I will have no clerk of mine mishandled or miscalled,"
    said De Aquila. "That seaman shall be whipped
    at his own mast. Write me first a letter, and thou shalt
    bear it, with the order for the whipping, tomorrow to the boat."

    'At this Gilbert would have kissed De Aquila's hand -
    he had not hoped to live until the morning - and when he
    trembled less he wrote a letter as from Fulke to the Duke,
    saying that the Kennel, which signified Pevensey, was shut, and
    that the Old Dog (which was De Aquila) sat outside it, and,
    moreover, that all had been betrayed.

    "'Write to any man that all is betrayed," said
    De Aquila, "and even the Pope himself would sleep
    uneasily. Eh, Jehan? If one told thee all was betrayed, what
    wouldst thou do?"

    "'I would run away," said Jehan. "it might be true."

    "'Well said," quoth De Aquila. "Write, Gilbert, that
    Montgomery, the great Earl, hath made his peace with
    the King, and that little D'Arcy, whom I hate, hath been
    hanged by the heels. We will give Robert full measure to
    chew upon. Write also that Fulke himself is sick to death
    of a dropsy."

    "'Nay!" cried Fulke, hanging in the well-shaft.
    "Drown me out of hand, but do not make a jest of me."

    "'Jest? I?" said De Aquila. "I am but fighting for life
    and lands with a pen, as thou hast shown me, Fulke."

    'Then Fulke groaned, for he was cold, and, "Let me
    confess," said he.

    "'Now, this is right neighbourly," said De Aquila,
    leaning over the shaft. "Thou hast read my sayings and
    doings - or at least the first part of them - and thou art
    minded to repay me with thy own doings and sayings. Take
    pen and inkhorn, Gilbert. Here is work that will not irk thee."

    "'Let my men go without hurt, and I will confess my
    treason against the King," said Fulke.

    "'Now, why has he grown so tender of his men of a
    sudden?" said Hugh to me; for Fulke had no name for
    mercy to his men. Plunder he gave them, but pity, none.

    "'Te! Te!" said De Aquila. "Thy treason was all confessed
    long ago by Gilbert. It would be enough to hang
    Montgomery himself."

    "'Nay; but spare my men," said Fulke; and we heard
    him splash like a fish in a pond, for the tide was rising.

    "'All in good time," said De Aquila. "The night is
    young; the wine is old; and we need only the merry tale.
    Begin the story of thy life since when thou wast a lad at
    Tours. Tell it nimbly!"

    "'Ye shame me to my soul," said Fulke.

    "'Then I have done what neither King nor Duke could
    do," said De Aquila. "But begin, and forget nothing."

    "'Send thy man away," said Fulke.

    "'That much can I do," said De Aquila. 'But, remember,
    I am like the Danes' King. I cannot turn the tide."

    "'How long will it rise?" said Fulke, and splashed anew.

    "'For three hours," said De Aquila. "Time to tell all thy
    good deeds. Begin, and, Gilbert, - I have heard thou art
    somewhat careless - do not twist his words from his true
    meaning."

    'So - fear of death in the dark being upon him - Fulke
    began, and Gilbert, not knowing what his fate might be,
    wrote it word by word. I have heard many tales, but
    never heard I aught to match the tale of Fulke his
    black life, as Fulke told it hollowly, hanging in the shaft.'

    'Was it bad?' said Dan, awestruck.
    'Beyond belief,' Sir Richard answered. 'None the less,
    there was that in it which forced even Gilbert to laugh.
    We three laughed till we ached. At one place his teeth so
    chattered that we could not well hear, and we reached
    him down a cup of wine. Then he warmed to it, and
    smoothly set out all his shifts, malices, and treacheries,
    his extreme boldnesses (he was desperate bold); his
    retreats, shufflings, and counterfeitings (he was also
    inconceivably a coward); his lack of gear and honour; his
    despair at their loss; his remedies, and well-coloured
    contrivances. Yes, he waved the filthy rags of his life
    before us, as though they had been some proud banner.
    When he ceased, we saw by torches that the tide stood at
    the corners of his mouth, and he breathed strongly
    through his nose.

    'We had him out, and rubbed him; we wrapped him in
    a cloak, and gave him wine, and we leaned and looked
    upon him, the while he drank. He was shivering,
    but shameless.

    'Of a sudden we heard jehan at the stairway wake, but
    a boy pushed past him, and stood before us, the Hall-
    rushes in his hair, all slubbered with sleep. "My father!
    My father! I dreamed of treachery," he cried, and babbled thickly.

    "'There is no treachery here," said Fulke. "Go!" and
    the boy turned, even then not fully awake, and jehan led
    him by the hand to the Great Hall.
    "'Thy only son!" said De Aquila. "Why didst thou
    bring the child here?"

    "'He is my heir. I dared not trust him to my brother,"
    said Fulke, and now he was ashamed. De Aquila said
    nothing, but sat weighing a wine-cup in his two hands -
    thus. Anon, Fulke touched him on the knee.

    "'Let the boy escape to Normandy," said he, "and do
    with me at thy pleasure. Yea, hang me tomorrow, with
    my letter to Robert round my neck, but let the boy go."

    "'Be still," said De Aquila. "I think for England."

    'So we waited what our Lord of Pevensey should
    devise; and the sweat ran down Fulke's forehead.

    'At last said De Aquila: "I am too old to judge, or to
    trust any man. I do not covet thy lands, as thou hast
    coveted mine; and whether thou art any better or any
    worse than any other black Angevin thief, it is for thy
    King to find out. Therefore, go back to thy King, Fulke."

    "'And thou wilt say nothing of what has passed?" said Fulke.

    "'Why should I? Thy son will stay with me. If the King
    calls me again to leave Pevensey, which I must guard
    against England's enemies; if the King sends his men
    against me for a traitor; or if I hear that the King in his bed
    thinks any evil of me or my two knights, thy son will be
    hanged from out this window, Fulke."'

    'But it hadn't anything to do with his son,' cried Una, startled.

    'How could we have hanged Fulke?' said Sir Richard.
    'We needed him to make our peace with the King. He
    would have betrayed half England for the boy's sake. Of
    that we were sure.'

    'I don't understand,' said Una. 'But I think it was
    simply awful.'

    'So did not Fulke. He was well pleased.'

    'What? Because his son was going to be killed?'

    'Nay. Because De Aquila had shown him how he might
    save the boy's life and his own lands and honours. "I will
    do it, " he said. "I swear I will do it. I will tell the King thou
    art no traitor, but the most excellent, valiant, and perfect
    of us all. Yes, I will save thee."

    'De Aquila looked still into the bottom of the cup,
    rolling the wine-dregs to and fro.
    "'Ay," he said. "If I had a son, I would, I think, save
    him. But do not by any means tell me how thou wilt go
    about it."

    "'Nay, nay," said Fulke, nodding his bald head wisely.
    "That is my secret. But rest at ease, De Aquila, no hair
    of thy head nor rood of thy land shall be forfeited," and
    he smiled like one planning great good deeds.

    "'And henceforward," said De Aquila, "I counsel thee
    to serve one master - not two."

    "'What?" said Fulke. "Can I work no more honest
    trading between the two sides these troublous times?"

    "'Serve Robert or the King - England or Normandy,"
    said De Aquila. "I care not which it is, but make thy
    choice here and now."

    "'The King, then," said Fulke, "for I see he is better
    served than Robert. Shall I swear it?"

    "'No need," said De Aquila, and he laid his hand on
    the parchments which Gilbert had written. "It shall be
    some part of my Gilbert's penance to copy out the
    savoury tale of thy life, till we have made ten, twenty, an
    hundred, maybe, copies. How many cattle, think you,
    would the Bishop of Tours give for that tale? Or thy
    brother? Or the Monks of Blois? Minstrels will turn it into
    songs which thy own Saxon serfs shall sing behind their
    plough-stilts, and men-at-arms riding through thy Norman
    towns. From here to Rome, Fulke, men will make
    very merry over that tale, and how Fulke told it, hanging
    in a well, like a drowned puppy. This shall be thy
    punishment, if ever I find thee double-dealing with thy
    King any more. Meantime, the parchments stay here
    with thy son. Him I will return to thee when thou hast
    made my peace with the King. The parchments never."

    'Fulke hid his face and groaned.

    "'Bones of the Saints!" said De Aquila, laughing. "The
    pen cuts deep. I could never have fetched that grunt out
    of thee with any sword."

    "'But so long as I do not anger thee, my tale will be
    secret?" said Fulke.

    "'Just so long. Does that comfort thee, Fulke?" said De Aquila.

    "'What other comfort have ye left me?" he said, and of
    a sudden he wept hopelessly like a child, dropping his
    face on his knees.'

    'Poor Fulke,' said Una.

    'I pitied him also,' said Sir Richard.

    "'After the spur, corn," said De Aquila, and he threw
    Fulke three wedges of gold that he had taken from our
    little chest by the bedplace.

    "'If I had known this," said Fulke, catching his breath,
    "I would never have lifted hand against Pevensey. Only
    lack of this yellow stuff has made me so unlucky in my dealings."

    'It was dawn then, and they stirred in the Great Hall
    below. We sent down Fulke's mail to be scoured, and
    when he rode away at noon under his own and the King's
    banner, very splendid and stately did he show. He
    smoothed his long beard, and called his son to his stirrup
    and kissed him. De Aquila rode with him as far as the
    New Mill landward. We thought the night had been all a dream.'

    'But did he make it right with the King?' Dan asked.
    'About your not being traitors, I mean.'

    Sir Richard smiled. 'The King sent no second summons
    to Pevensey, nor did he ask why De Aquila had not
    obeyed the first. Yes, that was Fulke's work. I know not
    how he did it, but it was well and swiftly done.'

    'Then you didn't do anything to his son?' said Una.

    'The boy? Oh, he was an imp! He turned the keep
    doors out of dortoirs while we had him. He sang foul
    songs, learned in the Barons' camps - poor fool; he set the
    hounds fighting in Hall; he lit the rushes to drive out, as
    he said, the fleas; he drew his dagger on jehan, who
    threw him down the stairway for it; and he rode his horse
    through crops and among sheep. But when we had
    beaten him, and showed him wolf and deer, he followed
    us old men like a young, eager hound, and called us
    "uncle". His father came the summer's end to take him
    away, but the boy had no lust to go, because of the
    otter-hunting, and he stayed on till the fox-hunting. I
    gave him a bittern's claw to bring him good luck at
    shooting. An imp, if ever there was!'

    'And what happened to Gilbert?' said Dan.

    'Not even a whipping. De Aquila said he would sooner
    a clerk, however false, that knew the Manor-roll than a
    fool, however true, that must be taught his work afresh.
    Moreover, after that night I think Gilbert loved as much
    as he feared De Aquila. At least he would not leave us -
    not even when Vivian, the King's Clerk, would have
    made him Sacristan of Battle Abbey. A false fellow, but,
    in his fashion, bold.'

    'Did Robert ever land in Pevensey after all?' Dan went on.

    'We guarded the coast too well while Henry was
    fighting his Barons; and three or four years later, when
    England had peace, Henry crossed to Normandy and
    showed his brother some work at Tenchebrai that cured
    Robert of fighting. Many of Henry's men sailed from
    Pevensey to that war. Fulke came, I remember, and we all
    four lay in the little chamber once again, and drank
    together. De Aquila was right. One should not judge
    men. Fulke was merry. Yes, always merry - with a catch
    in his breath.'

    'And what did you do afterwards?' said Una.

    'We talked together of times past. That is all men can
    do when they grow old, little maid.'


    The bell for tea rang faintly across the meadows. Dan
    lay in the bows of the Golden Hind; Una in the stern, the
    book of verses open in her lap, was reading from 'The
    Slave's Dream':
         'Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep,
         He saw his native land.'

    'I don't know when you began that,' said Dan, sleepily.

    On the middle thwart of the boat, beside Una's sun-
    bonnet, lay an Oak leaf, an Ash leaf, and a Thorn leaf,
    that must have dropped down from the trees above; and
    the brook giggled as though it had just seen some joke.



    The Runes on Weland's Sword




    A Smith makes me
    To betray my Man
    In my first fight.

    To gather Gold
    At the world's end
    I am sent.

    The Gold I gather
    Comes into England
    Out of deep Water.

    Like a shining Fish
    Then it descends
    Into deep Water.

    It is not given
    For goods or gear,
    But for The Thing.

    The Gold I gather
    A King covets
    For an ill use.

    The Gold I gather
    Is drawn up
    Out of deep Water.

    Like a shining Fish
    Then it descends
    Into deep Water.

    It is not given
    For goods or gear,
    But for The Thing.




    A CENTURION OF THE THIRTIETH





    Cities and Thrones and Powers


    Stand in Time's eye,
    Almost as long as flowers,
    Which daily die.
    But, as new buds put forth
    To glad new men,
    Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth
    The Cities rise again.

    This season's Daffodil,
    She never hears
    What change, what chance, what chill,
    Cut down last year's:
    But with bold countenance,
    And knowledge small,
    Esteems her seven days' continuance
    To be perpetual.

    So Time that is o'er-kind
    To all that be,
    Ordains us e'en as blind,
    As bold as she:
    That in our very death,
    And burial sure,
    Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith,
    'See how our works endure!'




    Dan had come to grief over his Latin, and was kept in; so
    Una went alone to Far Wood. Dan's big catapult and the
    lead bullets that Hobden had made for him were hidden
    in an old hollow beech-stub on the west of the wood.
    They had named the place out of the verse in Lays of
    Ancient Rome:

         From lordly Volaterrae,
         Where scowls the far-famed hold
         Piled by the hands of giants
         For Godlike Kings of old.

    They were the 'Godlike Kings', and when old Hobden
    piled some comfortable brushwood between the big wooden
    knees of Volaterrae, they called him 'Hands of Giants'.

    Una slipped through their private gap in the fence, and
    sat still awhile, scowling as scowlily and lordlily as she
    knew how; for Volaterrae is an important watch-tower
    that juts out of Far Wood just as Far Wood juts out of the
    hillside. Pook's Hill lay below her and all the turns of the
    brook as it wanders out of the Willingford Woods, between
    hop-gardens, to old Hobden's cottage at the
    Forge. The sou'-west wind (there is always a wind by
    Volaterrae) blew from the bare ridge where Cherry Clack
    Windmill stands.

    Now wind prowling through woods sounds like exciting
    things going to happen, and that is why on blowy
    days you stand up in Volaterrae and shout bits of the Lays
    to suit its noises.

    Una took Dan's catapult from its secret place, and
    made ready to meet Lars Porsena's army stealing
    through the wind-whitened aspens by the brook. A gust
    boomed up the valley, and Una chanted sorrowfully:

         'Verbenna down to Ostia
         Hath wasted all the plain:
         Astur hath stormed Janiculum,
         And the stout guards are slain.'

    But the wind, not charging fair to the wood, started
    aside and shook a single oak in Gleason's pasture. Here it
    made itself all small and crouched among the grasses,
    waving the tips of them as a cat waves the tip of her tail
    before she springs.

         'Now welcome - welcome, Sextus,' sang Una, loading
    the catapult -

         'Now welcome to thy home!
         Why dost thou stay, and turn away?
         Here lies the road to Rome.'

    She fired into the face of the lull, to wake up the
    cowardly wind, and heard a grunt from behind a thorn in
    the pasture.

    'Oh, my Winkie!' she said aloud, and that was something
    she had picked up from Dan. 'I b'lieve I've tickled
    up a Gleason cow.'

    'You little painted beast!' a voice cried. 'I'll teach you to
    sling your masters!'

    She looked down most cautiously, and saw a young
    man covered with hoopy bronze armour all glowing
    among the late broom. But what Una admired beyond all
    was his great bronze helmet with a red horse-tail that
    flicked in the wind. She could hear the long hairs rasp on
    his shimmery shoulder-plates.

    'What does the Faun mean,' he said, half aloud to
    himself, 'by telling me that the Painted People have
    changed?' He caught sight of Una's yellow head. 'Have
    you seen a painted lead-slinger?' he called.

    'No-o,' said Una. 'But if you've seen a bullet -'

    'Seen?' cried the man. 'It passed within a hair's- breadth
    of my ear.'

    'Well, that was me. I'm most awfully sorry.'

    'Didn't the Faun tell you I was coming?' He smiled.

    'Not if you mean Puck. I thought you were a Gleason
    cow. I - I didn't know you were a - a - What are you?'

    He laughed outright, showing a set of splendid teeth.
    His face and eyes were dark, and his eyebrows met above
    his big nose in one bushy black bar.

    'They call me Parnesius. I have been a Centurion of the
    Seventh Cohort of the Thirtieth Legion - the Ulpia Victrix.
    Did you sling that bullet?'

    'I did. I was using Dan's catapult,' said Una.

    'Catapults!' said he. 'I ought to know something about
    them. Show me!'

    He leaped the rough fence with a rattle of spear, shield,
    and armour, and hoisted himself into Volaterrae as
    quickly as a shadow.

    'A sling on a forked stick. I understand!' he cried, and
    pulled at the elastic. 'But what wonderful beast yields
    this stretching leather?'

    'It's laccy - elastic. You put the bullet into that loop,
    and then you pull hard.'

    The man pulled, and hit himself square on his thumbnail.

    'Each to his own weapon,' he said gravely, handing it
    back. 'I am better with the bigger machine, little maiden.
    But it's a pretty toy. A wolf would laugh at it. Aren't you
    afraid of wolves?'

    'There aren't any,' said Una.

    'Never believe it! A wolf's like a Winged Hat. He comes
    when he isn't expected. Don't they hunt wolves here?'

    'We don't hunt,'said Una, remembering what she had
    heard from grown-ups. 'We preserve - pheasants. Do
    you know them?'

    'I ought to,' said the young man, smiling again, and he
    imitated the cry of the cock-pheasant so perfectly that a
    bird answered out of the wood.

    'What a big painted clucking fool is a pheasant!' he
    said. 'Just like some Romans.'

    'But you're a Roman yourself, aren't you?' said Una.

    'Ye-es and no. I'm one of a good few thousands who
    have never seen Rome except in a picture. My people
    have lived at Vectis for generations. Vectis - that island
    West yonder that you can see from so far in clear weather.'

    'Do you mean the Isle of Wight? It lifts up just before
    rain, and you see it from the Downs.'

    'Very likely. Our villa's on the south edge of the Island,
    by the Broken Cliffs. Most of it is three hundred years
    old, but the cow-stables, where our first ancestor lived,
    must be a hundred years older. Oh, quite that, because
    the founder of our family had his land given him by
    Agricola at the Settlement. It's not a bad little place for its
    size. In springtime violets grow down to the very beach.
    I've gathered sea-weeds for myself and violets for my
    Mother many a time with our old nurse.'

    'Was your nurse a - a Romaness too?'

    'No, a Numidian. Gods be good to her! A dear, fat,
    brown thing with a tongue like a cowbell. She was a free
    woman. By the way, are you free, maiden?'

    'Oh, quite,' said Una. 'At least, till tea-time; and in
    summer our governess doesn't say much if we're late.'

    The young man laughed again - a proper
    understanding laugh.

    'I see,' said he. 'That accounts for your being in the
    wood. We hid among the cliffs.'

    'Did you have a governess, then?'

    'Did we not? A Greek, too. She had a way of clutching
    her dress when she hunted us among the gorse-bushes
    that made us laugh. Then she'd say she'd get us
    whipped. She never did, though, bless her! Aglaia was a
    thorough sportswoman, for all her learning.'

    'But what lessons did you do - when - when you
    were little?'
    'Ancient history, the Classics, arithmetic and so on,'he
    answered. 'My sister and I were thickheads, but my two
    brothers (I'm the middle one) liked those things, and, of
    course, Mother was clever enough for any six. She was
    nearly as tall as I am, and she looked like the new statue
    on the Western Road - the Demeter of the Baskets, you
    know. And funny! Roma Dea! How Mother could make
    us laugh!'

    'What at?'

    'Little jokes and sayings that every family has. Don't
    you know?'

    'I know we have, but I didn't know other people had
    them too,' said Una. 'Tell me about all your family, please.'

    'Good families are very much alike. Mother would sit
    spinning of evenings while Aglaia read in her corner, and
    Father did accounts, and we four romped about the
    passages. When our noise grew too loud the Pater would
    say, "Less tumult! Less tumult! Have you never heard of
    a Father's right over his children? He can slay them, my
    loves - slay them dead, and the Gods highly approve of
    the action!" Then Mother would prim up her dear mouth
    over the wheel and answer: "H'm! I'm afraid there can't
    be much of the Roman Father about you!" Then the Pater
    would roll up his accounts, and say, "I'll show you!" and
    then - then, he'd be worse than any of us!'

    'Fathers can - if they like,' said Una, her eyes dancing.

    'Didn't I say all good families are very much the same?'

    'What did you do in summer?' said Una. 'Play about, like us?'

    'Yes, and we visited our friends. There are no wolves in
    Vectis. We had many friends, and as many ponies as we wished.'

    'It must have been lovely,' said Una. 'I hope it lasted for ever.'

    'Not quite, little maid. When I was about sixteen or
    seventeen, the Father felt gouty, and we all went to the Waters.'

    'What waters?'

    'At Aquae Sulis. Every one goes there. You ought to
    get your Father to take you some day.'

    'But where? I don't know,' said Una.

    The young man looked astonished for a moment.
    'Aquae Sulis,' he repeated. 'The best baths in Britain. just
    as good, I'm told, as Rome. All the old gluttons sit in hot
    water, and talk scandal and politics. And the Generals
    come through the streets with their guards behind them;
    and the magistrates come in their chairs with their stiff
    guards behind them; and you meet fortune-tellers, and
    goldsmiths, and merchants, and philosophers, and
    feather-sellers, and ultra-Roman Britons, and ultra-
    British Romans, and tame tribesmen pretending to be
    civilised, and Jew lecturers, and - oh, everybody interesting.
    We young people, of course, took no interest in
    politics. We had not the gout. There were many of our
    age like us. We did not find life sad.

    'But while we were enjoying ourselves without thinking,
    my sister met the son of a magistrate in the West -
    and a year afterwards she was married to him. My young
    brother, who was always interested in plants and roots,
    met the First Doctor of a Legion from the City of the
    Legions, and he decided that he would be an Army
    doctor. I do not think it is a profession for a well-born
    man, but then - I'm not my brother. He went to Rome to
    study medicine, and now he's First Doctor of a Legion in
    Egypt - at Antinoe, I think, but I have not heard from him
    for some time.

    'My eldest brother came across a Greek philosopher,
    and told my Father that he intended to settle down on the
    estate as a farmer and a philosopher. You see,' - the
    young man's eyes twinkled - 'his philosopher was a
    long-haired one!'

    'I thought philosophers were bald,' said Una.

    'Not all. She was very pretty. I don't blame him.
    Nothing could have suited me better than my eldest
    brother's doing this, for I was only too keen to join the
    Army. I had always feared I should have to stay at home
    and look after the estate while my brother took this.'

    He rapped on his great glistening shield that never
    seemed to be in his way.

    'So we were well contented - we young people - and
    we rode back to Clausentum along the Wood Road very
    quietly. But when we reached home, Aglaia, our governess,
    saw what had come to us. I remember her at the
    door, the torch over her head, watching us climb the
    cliff-path from the boat. "Aie! Aie!" she said. "Children
    you went away. Men and a woman you return!" Then
    she kissed Mother, and Mother wept. Thus our visit to
    the Waters settled our fates for each of us, maiden.'
    He rose to his feet and listened, leaning on the shield-rim.

    'I think that's Dan - my brother,' said Una.

    'Yes; and the Faun is with him,'he replied, as Dan with
    Puck stumbled through the copse.

    'We should have come sooner,' Puck called, 'but
    the beauties of your native tongue, O Parnesius, have
    enthralled this young citizen.'

    Parnesius looked bewildered, even when
    Una explained.

    'Dan said the plural of "dominus" was "dominoes",
    and when Miss Blake said it wasn't he said he supposed it
    was "backgammon", and so he had to write it out twice -
    for cheek, you know.'
    Dan had climbed into Volaterrae, hot and panting.

    'I've run nearly all the way,'he gasped, 'and then Puck
    met me. How do you do, sir?'

    'I am in good health,' Parnesius answered. 'See! I have
    tried to bend the bow of Ulysses, but -' He held up his thumb.

    'I'm sorry. You must have pulled off too soon,' said
    Dan. 'But Puck said you were telling Una a story.'

    'Continue, O Parnesius,' said Puck, who had perched
    himself on a dead branch above them. 'I will be chorus.
    Has he puzzled you much, Una?'
    'Not a bit, except - I didn't know where Ak- Ak
    something was,' she answered.

    'Oh, Aquae Sulis. That's Bath, where the buns come
    from. Let the hero tell his own tale.'

    Parnesius pretended to thrust his spear at Puck's legs,
    but Puck reached down, caught at the horse-tail plume,
    and pulled off the tall helmet.

    'Thanks, jester,' said Parnesius, shaking his curly dark
    head. 'That is cooler. Now hang it up for me .

    'I was telling your sister how I joined the Army,' he
    said to Dan.

    'Did you have to pass an Exam?' Dan asked eagerly.

    'No. I went to my Father, and said I should like to enter
    the Dacian Horse (I had seen some at Aquae Sulis); but he
    said I had better begin service in a regular Legion from
    Rome. Now, like many of our youngsters, I was not too
    fond of anything Roman. The Roman-born officers and
    magistrates looked down on us British-born as though
    we were barbarians. I told my Father so.

    "'I know they do," he said; "but remember, after all,
    we are the people of the Old Stock, and our duty is to
    the Empire."

    "'To which Empire?" I asked. "We split the Eagle
    before I was born."

    "'What thieves' talk is that?" said my Father. He hated slang.

    "'Well, sir," I said, "we've one Emperor in Rome, and I
    don't know how many Emperors the outlying Provinces
    have set up from time to time. Which am I to follow?"

    "'Gratian," said he. "At least he's a sportsman."

    "'He's all that," I said. "Hasn't he turned himself into a
    raw-beef-eating Scythian?"

    "'Where did you hear of it?" said the Pater.

    "'At Aquae Sulis," I said. It was perfectly true. This
    precious Emperor Gratian of ours had a bodyguard of
    fur-cloaked Scythians, and he was so crazy about them
    that he dressed like them. In Rome of all places in the
    world! It was as bad as if my own Father had painted
    himself blue!

    "'No matter for the clothes," said the Pater. "They are
    only the fringe of the trouble. It began before your time or
    mine. Rome has forsaken her Gods, and must be
    punished. The great war with the Painted People broke
    out in the very year the temples of our Gods were
    destroyed. We beat the Painted People in the very year
    our temples were rebuilt. Go back further still." He
    went back to the time of Diocletian; and to listen to him
    you would have thought Eternal Rome herself was on
    the edge of destruction, just because a few people had
    become a little large-minded.

    'I knew nothing about it. Aglaia never taught us the
    history of our own country. She was so full of her ancient Greeks.

    "'There is no hope for Rome," said the Pater, at last.
    "She has forsaken her Gods, but if the Gods forgive us
    here, we may save Britain. To do that, we must keep the
    Painted People back. Therefore, I tell you, Parnesius, as a
    Father, that if your heart is set on service, your place is
    among men on the Wall - and not with women among
    the cities."'

    'What Wall?' asked Dan and Una at once.

    'Father meant the one we call Hadrian's Wall. I'll tell
    you about it later. It was built long ago, across North
    Britain, to keep out the Painted People - Picts, you call
    them. Father had fought in the great Pict War that lasted
    more than twenty years, and he knew what fighting
    meant. Theodosius, one of our great Generals, had
    chased the little beasts back far into the North before I
    was born. Down at Vectis, of course, we never troubled
    our heads about them. But when my Father spoke as he
    did, I kissed his hand, and waited for orders. We British-
    born Romans know what is due to our parents.'

    'If I kissed my Father's hand, he'd laugh,' said Dan.

    'Customs change; but if you do not obey your Father,
    the Gods remember it. You may be quite sure of that.

    'After our talk, seeing I was in earnest, the Pater sent
    me over to Clausentum to learn my foot-drill in a barrack
    full of foreign Auxiliaries - as unwashed and unshaved a
    mob of mixed barbarians as ever scrubbed a breastplate.
    It was your stick in their stomachs and your shield in their
    faces to push them into any sort of formation. When I had
    learned my work the Instructor gave me a handful - and
    they were a handful! - of Gauls and Iberians to polish up
    till they were sent to their stations up-country. I did my
    best, and one night a villa in the suburbs caught fire, and I
    had my handful out and at work before any of the other
    troops. I noticed a quiet-looking man on the lawn, leaning
    on a stick. He watched us passing buckets from the
    pond, and at last he said to me: "Who are you?"

    "'A probationer, waiting for a command," I answered.
    I didn't know who he was from Deucalion!

    "'Born in Britain?" he said.

    "'Yes, if you were born in Spain," I said, for he
    neighed his words like an Iberian mule.

    "'And what might you call yourself when you are at
    home?" he said, laughing.

    "'That depends," I answered; "sometimes one thing
    and sometimes another. But now I'm busy."

    'He said no more till we had saved the family Gods
    (they were respectable householders), and then he
    grunted across the laurels: "Listen, young sometimes-
    one-thing-and-sometimes-another. In future call yourself
    Centurion of the Seventh Cohort of the Thirtieth, the
    Ulpia Victrix. That will help me to remember you. Your
    Father and a few other people call me Maximus."

    'He tossed me the polished stick he was leaning on,
    and went away. You might have knocked me down with it!'
    'Who was he?' said Dan.

    'Maximus himself, our great General! The General of
    Britain who had been Theodosius's right hand in the Pict
    War! Not only had he given me my Centurion's stick
    direct, but three steps in a good Legion as well! A new
    man generally begins in the Tenth Cohort of his Legion,
    and works up.'

    'And were you pleased?' said Una.

    'Very. I thought Maximus had chosen me for my good
    looks and fine style in marching, but, when I went home,
    the Pater told me he had served under Maximus in the
    great Pict War, and had asked him to befriend me.'

    'A child you were!' said Puck, from above.

    'I was,' said Parnesius. 'Don't begrudge it me, Faun.
    Afterwards - the Gods know I put aside the games!' And
    Puck nodded, brown chin on brown hand, his big eyes still.

    'The night before I left we sacrificed to our ancestors -
    the usual little Home Sacrifice - but I never prayed so
    earnestly to all the Good Shades, and then I went with

    my Father by boat to Regnum, and across the chalk
    eastwards to Anderida yonder.'

    'Regnum? Anderida?' The children turned their faces
    to Puck.

    'Regnum's Chichester,' he said, pointing towards
    Cherry Clack, 'and'- he threw his arm South behind him
    -'Anderida's Pevensey.'

    'Pevensey again!' said Dan. 'Where Weland landed?'

    'Weland and a few others,' said Puck. 'Pevensey isn't
    young - even compared to me!'

    'The headquarters of the Thirtieth lay at Anderida in
    summer, but my own Cohort, the Seventh, was on the
    Wall up North. Maximus was inspecting Auxiliaries - the
    Abulci, I think - at Anderida, and we stayed with him, for
    he and my Father were very old friends. I was only there
    ten days when I was ordered to go up with thirty men to
    my Cohort.' He laughed merrily. 'A man never forgets
    his first march. I was happier than any Emperor when I
    led my handful through the North Gate of the Camp, and
    we saluted the guard and the Altar of Victory there.'

    'How? How?' said Dan and Una.

    Parnesius smiled, and stood up, flashing in his armour.

    'So!' said he; and he moved slowly through the beautiful
    movements of the Roman Salute, that ends with a
    hollow clang of the shield coming into its place between
    the shoulders.

    'Hai!' said Puck. 'That sets one thinking!'

    'We went out fully armed,' said Parnesius, sitting
    down; 'but as soon as the road entered the Great Forest,
    my men expected the pack-horses to hang their shields
    on. "No!" I said; you can dress like women in Anderida,
    but while you're with me you will carry your own
    weapons and armour."

    "'But it's hot," said one of them, "and we haven't a
    doctor. Suppose we get sunstroke, or a fever?"

    "'Then die," I said, "and a good riddance to Rome! Up
    shield - up spears, and tighten your foot-wear!"

    "'Don't think yourself Emperor of Britain already," a
    fellow shouted. I knocked him over with the butt of my
    spear, and explained to these Roman-born Romans that,
    if there were any further trouble, we should go on with
    one man short. And, by the Light of the Sun, I meant it
    too! My raw Gauls at Clausentum had never treated me so.

    'Then, quietly as a cloud, Maximus rode out of the
    fern (my Father behind him), and reined up across the
    road. He wore the Purple, as though he were already
    Emperor; his leggings were of white buckskin laced
    with gold.

    'My men dropped like - like partridges.

    'He said nothing for some time, only looked, with his
    eyes puckered. Then he crooked his forefinger, and my
    men walked - crawled, I mean - to one side.

    "'Stand in the sun, children," he said, and they
    formed up on the hard road.

    "'What would you have done," he said to me, "if I had
    not been here?"

    "'I should have killed that man," I answered.

    "'Kill him now," he said. "He will not move a limb."

    "'No," I said. "You've taken my men out of my
    command. I should only be your butcher if I killed him
    now." Do you see what I meant?' Parnesius turned to Dan.
    'Yes,'said Dan. 'It wouldn't have been fair, somehow.'

    'That was what I thought,' said Parnesius. 'But
    Maximus frowned. "You'll never be an Emperor," he
    said. "Not even a General will you be."

    'I was silent, but my Father seemed pleased.
    "'I came here to see the last of you," he said.

    "'You have seen it," said Maximus. "I shall never need
    your son any more. He will live and he will die an officer
    of a Legion - and he might have been Prefect of one of my
    Provinces. Now eat and drink with us," he said. "Your
    men will wait till you have finished."

    'My miserable thirty stood like wine-skins glistening in
    the hot sun, and Maximus led us to where his people had
    set a meal. Himself he mixed the wine.

    "'A year from now," he said, "you will remember that
    you have sat with the Emperor of Britain - and Gaul."

    "'Yes," said the Pater, "you can drive two mules -
    Gaul and Britain."

    "'Five years hence you will remember that you have
    drunk" - he passed me the cup and there was blue borage
    in it - "with the Emperor of Rome!"

    "'No; you can't drive three mules. They will tear YOU
    in pieces," said my Father.

    "'And you on the Wall, among the heather, will weep
    because your notion of justice was more to you than the
    favour of the Emperor of Rome."

    'I sat quite still. One does not answer a General who
    wears the Purple.

    "'I am not angry with you," he went on; "I owe too
    much to your Father -"

    "'You owe me nothing but advice that you never
    took," said the Pater.

    "'- to be unjust to any of your family. Indeed, I say you
    may make a good Tribune, but, so far as I am concerned,
    on the Wall you will live, and on the Wall you will die,"
    said Maximus.

    "'Very like," said my Father. "But we shall have the
    Picts and their friends breaking through before long.
    You cannot move all troops out of Britain to make you
    Emperor, and expect the North to sit quiet."
    "'I follow my destiny," said Maximus.

    "'Follow it, then," said my Father, pulling up a fern
    root; "and die as Theodosius died."

    "'Ah!" said Maximus. "My old General was killed
    because he served the Empire too well. I may be killed,
    but not for that reason," and he smiled a little pale grey
    smile that made my blood run cold.

    "'Then I had better follow my destiny," I said, "and
    take my men to the Wall."

    'He looked at me a long time, and bowed his head
    slanting like a Spaniard. "Follow it, boy," he said. That
    was all. I was only too glad to get away, though I had
    many messages for home. I found my men standing as
    they had been put - they had not even shifted their feet in
    the dust, and off I marched, still feeling that terrific smile
    like an east wind up my back. I never halted them till
    sunset, and' - he turned about and looked at Pook's Hill
    below him - 'then I halted yonder.' He pointed to the
    broken, bracken-covered shoulder of the Forge Hill
    behind old Hobden's cottage.

    'There? Why, that's only the old Forge - where they
    made iron once,' said Dan.

    'Very good stuff it was too,' said Parnesius calmly. 'We
    mended three shoulder-straps here and had a spear-head
    riveted. The Forge was rented from the Government by a
    one-eyed smith from Carthage. I remember we called
    him Cyclops. He sold me a beaver-skin rug for my sister's room.'

    'But it couldn't have been here,' Dan insisted.

    'But it was! From the Altar of Victory at Anderida to the
    First Forge in the Forest here is twelve miles seven
    hundred paces. It is all in the Road Book. A man doesn't
    forget his first march. I think I could tell you every station
    between this and -! He leaned forward, but his eye was
    caught by the setting sun.

    It had come down to the top of Cherry Clack Hill, and
    the light poured in between the tree trunks so that you
    could see red and gold and black deep into the heart of
    Far Wood; and Parnesius in his armour shone as though
    he had been afire.

    'Wait!' he said, lifting a hand, and the sunlight jinked
    on his glass bracelet. 'Wait! I pray to Mithras!'

    He rose and stretched his arms westward, with deep,
    splendid-sounding words.
    Then Puck began to sing too, in a voice like bells
    tolling, and as he sang he slipped from Volaterrae to the
    ground, and beckoned the children to follow. They
    obeyed; it seemed as though the voices were pushing
    them along; and through the goldy-brown light on the
    beech leaves they walked, while Puck between them
    chanted something like this:

         'Cur mundus militat sub vana gloria
         Cujus prosperitas est transitoria?
         Tam cito labitur ejus potentia
         Quam vasa figuli quae sunt fragilia.'

    They found themselves at the little locked gates of the wood.

         'Quo Caesar abiit celsus imperio?
         Vel Dives splendidus totus in prandio?
         Dic ubi Tullius -'

    Still singing, he took Dan's hand and wheeled him
    round to face Una as she came out of the gate. It shut
    behind her, at the same time as Puck threw the memory-
    magicking Oak, Ash and Thorn leaves over their heads.

    'Well, you are jolly late,' said Una. 'Couldn't you get
    away before?'

    'I did,' said Dan. 'I got away in lots of time, but - but I
    didn't know it was so late. Where've you been?'

    'In Volaterrae - waiting for you.'

    'Sorry,' said Dan. 'It was all that beastly Latin.'



    A British-Roman Song


    (A.D. 406)


    My father's father saw it not,
    And I, belike, shall never come
    To look on that so-holy spot -
    The very Rome -

    Crowned by all Time, all Art, all Might,
    The equal work of Gods and Man,
    City beneath whose oldest height -
    The Race began!

    Soon to send forth again a brood,
    Unshakeable, we pray, that clings
    To Rome's thrice-hammered hardihood -
    In arduous things.
    Strong heart with triple armour bound,
    Beat strongly, for Thy life-blood runs,
    Age after Age, the Empire round -
    In us Thy Sons,
    Who, distant from the Seven Hills,
    Loving and serving much, require
    Thee - Thee to guard 'gainst home-born ills
    The Imperial Fire!




    ON THE GREAT WALL





    'When I left Rome for Lalage's sake
    By the Legions' Road to Rimini,
    She vowed her heart was mine to take
    With me and my shield to Rimini -
    (Till the Eagles flew from Rimini!)
    And I've tramped Britain, and I've tramped Gaul,
    And the Pontic shore where the snow-flakes fall
    As white as the neck of Lalage -
    (As cold as the heart of Lalage!)
    And I've lost Britain, and I've lost Gaul,'

    (the voice seemed very cheerful about it),

    'And I've lost Rome, and, worst of all,
    I've lost Lalage!'

    They were standing by the gate to Far Wood when they
    heard this song. Without a word they hurried to their
    private gap and wriggled through the hedge almost atop
    of a jay that was feeding from Puck's hand.
    'Gently!' said Puck. 'What are you looking for?'

    'Parnesius, of course,' Dan answered. 'We've only just
    remembered yesterday. It isn't fair.'

    Puck chuckled as he rose. 'I'm sorry, but children who
    spend the afternoon with me and a Roman Centurion
    need a little settling dose of Magic before they go to tea
    with their governess. Ohe, Parnesius!' he called.

    'Here, Faun!' came the answer from Volaterrae. They
    could see the shimmer of bronze armour in the beech-
    crotch, and the friendly flash of the great shield uplifted.

    'I have driven out the Britons.' Parnesius laughed like a
    boy. 'I occupy their high forts. But Rome is merciful! You
    may come up.'And up they three all scrambled.

    'What was the song you were singing just now?' said
    Una, as soon as she had settled herself.

    'That? Oh, Rimini. It's one of the tunes that are always
    being born somewhere in the Empire. They run like a
    pestilence for six months or a year, till another one
    pleases the Legions, and then they march to that.'

    'Tell them about the marching, Parnesius. Few people
    nowadays walk from end to end of this country,' said Puck.

    'The greater their loss. I know nothing better than the
    Long March when your feet are hardened. You begin
    after the mists have risen, and you end, perhaps, an hour
    after sundown.'

    'And what do you have to eat?' Dan asked promptly.

    'Fat bacon, beans, and bread, and whatever wine
    happens to be in the rest-houses. But soldiers are born
    grumblers. Their very first day out, my men complained
    of our water-ground British corn. They said it wasn't so
    filling as the rough stuff that is ground in the Roman
    ox-mills. However, they had to fetch and eat it.'

    'Fetch it? Where from?' said Una.

    'From that newly invented water-mill below the Forge.'

    'That's Forge Mill - our Mill!' Una looked at Puck.

    'Yes; yours,' Puck put in. 'How old did you think it was?'

    'I don't know. Didn't Sir Richard Dalyngridge talk
    about it?'

    'He did, and it was old in his day,' Puck answered.
    'Hundreds of years old.'

    'It was new in mine,' said Parnesius. 'My men looked
    at the flour in their helmets as though it had been a nest of
    adders. They did it to try my patience. But I - addressed
    them, and we became friends. To tell the truth, they
    taught me the Roman Step. You see, I'd only served with
    quick-marching Auxiliaries. A Legion's pace is altogether
    different. It is a long, slow stride, that never varies from
    sunrise to sunset. "Rome's Race - Rome's Pace," as the
    proverb says. Twenty-four miles in eight hours, neither
    more nor less. Head and spear up, shield on your back,
    cuirass-collar open one handsbreadth - and that's how
    you take the Eagles through Britain.'

    'And did you meet any adventures?' said Dan.

    'There are no adventures South the Wall,' said
    Parnesius. 'The worst thing that happened me was
    having to appear before a magistrate up North, where a
    wandering philosopher had jeered at the Eagles. I was
    able to show that the old man had deliberately blocked
    our road; and the magistrate told him, out of his own
    Book, I believe, that, whatever his Gods might be, he
    should pay proper respect to Caesar.'

    'What did you do?' said Dan.

    'Went on. Why should I care for such things, my
    business being to reach my station? It took me twenty days.

    'Of course, the farther North you go the emptier are the
    roads. At last you fetch clear of the forests and climb bare
    hills, where wolves howl in the ruins of our cities that
    have been. No more pretty girls; no more jolly magistrates
    who knew your Father when he was young, and
    invite you to stay with them; no news at the temples and
    way-stations except bad news of wild beasts. There's
    where you meet hunters, and trappers for the Circuses,
    prodding along chained bears and muzzled wolves. Your
    pony shies at them, and your men laugh.

    'The houses change from gardened villas to shut forts
    with watch-towers of grey stone, and great stone-walled
    sheepfolds, guarded by armed Britons of the North
    Shore. In the naked hills beyond the naked houses,
    where the shadows of the clouds play like cavalry charging,
    you see puffs of black smoke from the mines. The
    hard road goes on and on - and the wind sings through
    your helmet-plume - past altars to Legions and Generals
    forgotten, and broken statues of Gods and Heroes, and
    thousands of graves where the mountain foxes and hares
    peep at you. Red-hot in summer, freezing in winter, is
    that big, purple heather country of broken stone.

    'Just when you think you are at the world's end, you
    see a smoke from East to West as far as the eye can turn,
    and then, under it, also as far as the eye can stretch,
    houses and temples, shops and theatres, barracks and
    granaries, trickling along like dice behind - always behind
    - one long, low, rising and falling, and hiding and
    showing line of towers. And that is the Wall!'

    'Ah!' said the children, taking breath.

    'You may well,' said Parnesius. 'Old men who have
    followed the Eagles since boyhood say nothing in the
    Empire is more wonderful than first sight of the Wall!'

    'Is it just a Wall? Like the one round the kitchen-
    garden?' said Dan.
    'No, no! It is the Wall. Along the top are towers with
    guard-houses, small towers, between. Even on the narrowest
    part of it three men with shields can walk abreast,
    from guard-house to guard-house. A little curtain wall,
    no higher than a man's neck, runs along the top of the
    thick wall, so that from a distance you see the helmets of
    the sentries sliding back and forth like beads. Thirty feet
    high is the Wall, and on the Picts' side, the North, is a
    ditch, strewn with blades of old swords and spear-heads
    set in wood, and tyres of wheels joined by chains. The
    Little People come there to steal iron for their arrow-heads.

    'But the Wall itself is not more wonderful than the
    town behind it. Long ago there were great ramparts and
    ditches on the South side, and no one was allowed to
    build there. Now the ramparts are partly pulled down
    and built over, from end to end of the Wall; making a thin
    town eighty miles long. Think of it! One roaring, rioting,
    cock-fighting, wolf-baiting, horse-racing town, from
    Ituna on the West to Segedunum on the cold eastern
    beach! On one side heather, woods and ruins where Picts
    hide, and on the other, a vast town - long like a snake,
    and wicked like a snake. Yes, a snake basking beside a
    warm wall!

    'My Cohort, I was told, lay at Hunno, where the Great
    North Road runs through the Wall into the Province of
    Valentia.'Parnesius laughed scornfully. 'The Province of
    Valentia! We followed the road, therefore, into Hunno
    town, and stood astonished. The place was a fair - a fair
    of peoples from every corner of the Empire. Some were
    racing horses: some sat in wine-shops: some watched
    dogs baiting bears, and many gathered in a ditch to see
    cocks fight. A boy not much older than myself, but I
    could see he was an officer, reined up before me and
    asked what I wanted.

    "'My station," I said, and showed him my shield.'
    Parnesius held up his broad shield with its three X's like
    letters on a beer-cask.

    "'Lucky omen!" said he. "Your Cohort's the next
    tower to us, but they're all at the cock-fight. This is a
    happy place. Come and wet the Eagles." He meant to
    offer me a drink.

    "'When I've handed over my men," I said. I felt angry
    and ashamed.

    "'Oh, you'll soon outgrow that sort of nonsense," he
    answered. "But don't let me interfere with your hopes.
    Go on to the Statue of Roma Dea. You can't miss it. The
    main road into Valentia!" and he laughed and rode off. I
    could see the statue not a quarter of a mile away, and
    there I went. At some time or other the Great North Road
    ran under it into Valentia; but the far end had been
    blocked up because of the Picts, and on the plaster a man
    had scratched, "Finish!" It was like marching into a cave.
    We grounded spears together, my little thirty, and it
    echoed in the barrel of the arch, but none came. There
    was a door at one side painted with our number. We
    prowled in, and I found a cook asleep, and ordered him
    to give us food. Then I climbed to the top of the Wall, and
    looked out over the Pict country, and I - thought,' said
    Parnesius. 'The bricked-up arch with "Finish!" on the
    plaster was what shook me, for I was not much more than a boy.'

    'What a shame!'said Una. 'But did you feel happy after
    you'd had a good -'Dan stopped her with a nudge.

    'Happy?' said Parnesius. 'When the men of the Cohort
    I was to command came back unhelmeted from the
    cock-fight, their birds under their arms, and asked me
    who I was? No, I was not happy; but I made my new
    Cohort unhappy too ... I wrote my Mother I was happy,
    but, oh, my friends'- he stretched arms over bare knees -
    'I would not wish my worst enemy to suffer as I suffered
    through my first months on the Wall. Remember this:
    among the officers was scarcely one, except myself (and I
    thought I had lost the favour of Maximus, my General),
    scarcely one who had not done something of wrong or
    folly. Either he had killed a man, or taken money, or
    insulted the magistrates, or blasphemed the Gods, and
    so had been sent to the Wall as a hiding-place from shame
    or fear. And the men were as the officers. Remember,
    also, that the Wall was manned by every breed and race
    in the Empire. No two towers spoke the same tongue, or
    worshipped the same Gods. In one thing only we were all
    equal. No matter what arms we had used before we came
    to the Wall, on the Wall we were all archers, like the
    Scythians. The Pict cannot run away from the arrow, or
    crawl under it. He is a bowman himself. He knows!'

    'I suppose you were fighting Picts all the time,' said Dan.

    'Picts seldom fight. I never saw a fighting Pict for half a
    year. The tame Picts told us they had all gone North.'

    'What is a tame Pict?' said Dan.

    'A Pict - there were many such - who speaks a few
    words of our tongue, and slips across the Wall to sell
    ponies and wolf-hounds. Without a horse and a dog, and
    a friend, man would perish. The Gods gave me all three,
    and there is no gift like friendship. Remember this' -
    Parnesius turned to Dan -'when you become a young
    man. For your fate will turn on the first true friend you make.'

    'He means,' said Puck, grinning, 'that if you try to
    make yourself a decent chap when you're young, you'll
    make rather decent friends when you grow up. If you're a
    beast, you'll have beastly friends. Listen to the Pious
    Parnesius on Friendship!'

    'I am not pious,'Parnesius answered, 'but I know what
    goodness means; and my friend, though he was without
    hope, was ten thousand times better than I. Stop
    laughing, Faun!'

    'Oh, Youth Eternal and All-believing,' cried Puck, as
    he rocked on the branch above. 'Tell them about your Pertinax.'

    'He was that friend the Gods sent me - the boy who
    spoke to me when I first came. Little older than myself,
    commanding the Augusta Victoria Cohort on the tower
    next to us and the Numidians. In virtue he was far my superior.'

    'Then why was he on the Wall?' Una asked, quickly.
    'They'd all done something bad. You said so yourself.'

    'He was the nephew, his father had died, of a great rich
    man in Gaul who was not always kind to his mother.
    When Pertinax grew up, he discovered this, and so his
    uncle shipped him off, by trickery and force, to the Wall.
    We came to know each other at a ceremony in our Temple
    in the dark. It was the Bull-Killing,'Parnesius explained to Puck.

    'I see, said Puck, and turned to the children. 'That's
    something you wouldn't quite understand. Parnesius
    means he met Pertinax in church.'

    'Yes - in the Cave we first met, and we were both raised
    to the Degree of Gryphons together.' Parnesius lifted his
    hand towards his neck for an instant. 'He had been on the
    Wall two years, and knew the Picts well. He taught me
    first how to take Heather.'

    'What's that?' said Dan.

    'Going out hunting in the Pict country with a tame Pict.
    You are quite safe so long as you are his guest, and wear a
    sprig of heather where it can be seen. If you went alone
    you would surely be killed, if you were not smothered
    first in the bogs. Only the Picts know their way about
    those black and hidden bogs. Old Allo, the one-eyed,
    withered little Pict from whom we bought our ponies,
    was our special friend. At first we went only to escape
    from the terrible town, and to talk together about our
    homes. Then he showed us how to hunt wolves and
    those great red deer with horns like Jewish candlesticks.
    The Roman-born officers rather looked down on us for
    doing this, but we preferred the heather to their amusements.
    Believe me,' Parnesius turned again to Dan, 'a
    boy is safe from all things that really harm when he is
    astride a pony or after a deer. Do you remember,
    O Faun,' - he turned to Puck - 'the little altar I built
    to the Sylvan Pan by the pine-forest beyond the brook?'

    'Which? The stone one with the line from Xenophon?'
    said Puck, in quite a new voice.

    'No! What do I know of Xenophon? That was Pertinax -
    after he had shot his first mountain-hare with an arrow -
    by chance! Mine I made of round pebbles, in memory
    of my first bear. It took me one happy day to build.'
    Parnesius faced the children quickly.

    'And that was how we lived on the Wall for two years -
    a little scuffling with the Picts, and a great deal of hunting
    with old Allo in the Pict country. He called us his children
    sometimes, and we were fond of him and his barbarians,
    though we never let them paint us Pict-fashion. The
    marks endure till you die.'

    'How's it done?' said Dan. 'Anything like tattooing?'

    'They prick the skin till the blood runs, and rub in
    coloured juices. Allo was painted blue, green, and red
    from his forehead to his ankles. He said it was part of his
    religion. He told us about his religion (Pertinax was
    always interested in such things), and as we came to
    know him well, he told us what was happening in Britain
    behind the Wall. Many things took place behind us in
    those days. And by the Light of the Sun,' said Parnesius,
    earnestly, 'there was not much that those little people did
    not know! He told me when Maximus crossed over to
    Gaul, after he had made himself Emperor of Britain, and
    what troops and emigrants he had taken with him. We
    did not get the news on the Wall till fifteen days later. He
    told me what troops Maximus was taking out of Britain
    every month to help him to conquer Gaul; and I always
    found the numbers were as he said. Wonderful! And I tell
    another strange thing!'

    He joined his hands across his knees, and leaned his
    head on the curve of the shield behind him.

    'Late in the summer, when the first frosts begin and the
    Picts kill their bees, we three rode out after wolf with
    some new hounds. Rutilianus, our General, had given us
    ten days' leave, and we had pushed beyond the Second
    Wall - beyond the Province of Valentia - into the higher
    hills, where there are not even any of old Rome's ruins.
    We killed a she-wolf before noon, and while Allo was
    skinning her he looked up and said to me, "When you are
    Captain of the Wall, my child, you won't be able to do this
    any more!"

    'I might as well have been made Prefect of Lower Gaul,
    so I laughed and said, "Wait till I am Captain."

    "'No, don't wait," said Allo. "Take my advice and go home -
    both of you."

    "'We have no homes," said Pertinax. "You
    know that as well as we do . We're finished men - thumbs
    down against both of us. Only men without hope would
    risk their necks on your ponies."

    The old man laughed one of those short Pict laughs - like
    a fox barking on a frosty night. "I'm fond of you two," he said.
    "Besides, I've taught you what little you know about hunting. Take
    my advice and go home."

    "'We can't," I said. "I'm out of favour with my
    General, for one thing; and for another, Pertinax has an uncle."

    "'I don't know about his uncle," said Allo, "but the
    trouble with you, Parnesius, is that your General thinks
    well of you."

    "'Roma Dea!" said Pertinax, sitting up. "What can you
    guess what Maximus thinks, you old horse-coper?"

    'Just then (you know how near the brutes creep when
    one is eating?) a great dog-wolf jumped out behind us,
    and away our rested hounds tore after him, with us at
    their tails. He ran us far out of any country we'd ever
    heard of, straight as an arrow till sunset, towards the
    sunset. We came at last to long capes stretching into
    winding waters, and on a grey beach below us we saw
    ships drawn up. Forty-seven we counted - not Roman
    galleys but the raven-winged ships from the North where
    Rome does not rule. Men moved in the ships, and the sun
    flashed on their helmets - winged helmets of the red-haired
    men from the North where Rome does not rule. We watched, and we
    counted, and we wondered, for though we had heard rumours
    concerning these Winged Hats, as the Picts called them, never
    before had we looked upon them.

    "'Come away! come away!" said Allo. "My Heather
    won't protect you here. We shall all be killed!" His legs
    trembled like his voice. Back we went - back across the
    heather under the moon, till it was nearly morning, and
    our poor beasts stumbled on some ruins.

    'When we woke, very stiff and cold, Allo was mixing
    the meal and water. One does not light fires in the Pict
    country except near a village. The little men are always
    signalling to each other with smokes, and a strange
    smoke brings them out buzzing like bees. They can sting, too!

    "'What we saw last night was a trading-station," said
    Allo. "Nothing but a trading-station. "

    "'I do not like lies on an empty stomach," said
    Pertinax. "I suppose" (he had eyes like an eagle's) - "I
    suppose that is a trading-station also?" He pointed to a
    smoke far off on a hill-top, ascending in what we call the
    Picts' Call: - Puff - double-puff: double-puff - puff! They
    make it by raising and dropping a wet hide on a fire.

    "'No," said Allo, pushing the platter back into the bag.
    "That is for you and me. Your fate is fixed. Come."

    'We came. When one takes Heather, one must obey
    one's Pict - but that wretched smoke was twenty miles
    distant, well over on the East coast, and the day was as
    hot as a bath.

    "'Whatever happens," said Allo, while our ponies
    grunted along, "I want you to remember me."
    "'I shall not forget," said Pertinax. "You have cheated
    me out of my breakfast."

    "What is a handful of crushed oats to a Roman?" he
    said. Then he laughed his laugh that was not a laugh.

    "What would you do if you were a handful of oats being
    crushed between the upper and lower stones of a mill?"

    "'I'm Pertinax, not a riddle-guesser," said Pertinax.

    "'You're a fool," said Allo. "Your Gods and my Gods
    are threatened by strange Gods, and all you can do is to laugh."

    "'Threatened men live long," I said.

    "'I pray the Gods that may be true," he said. "But I ask
    you again not to forget me."

    'We climbed the last hot hill and looked out on the
    eastern sea, three or four miles off. There was a small
    sailing-galley of the North Gaul pattern at anchor, her
    landing-plank down and her sail half up; and below us,
    alone in a hollow, holding his pony, sat Maximus,
    Emperor of Britain! He was dressed like a hunter, and he
    leaned on his little stick; but I knew that back as far as I
    could see it, and I told Pertinax.

    "'You're madder than Allo!" he said. "It must be the sun!"

    'Maximus never stirred till we stood before him. Then
    he looked me up and down, and said: "Hungry again? It
    seems to be my destiny to feed you whenever we meet. I
    have food here. Allo shall cook it."

    "'No," said Allo. "A Prince in his own land does not
    wait on wandering Emperors. I feed my two children
    without asking your leave." He began to blow up the ashes.

    "'I was wrong," said Pertinax. "We are all mad. Speak
    up, O Madman called Emperor!"

    'Maximus smiled his terrible tight-lipped smile, but
    two years on the Wall do not make a man afraid of mere
    looks. So I was not afraid.

    "'I meant you, Parnesius, to live and die a Centurion of
    the Wall," said Maximus. "But it seems from these," - he
    fumbled in his breast - "you can think as well as draw."
    He pulled out a roll of letters I had written to my people,
    full of drawings of Picts, and bears, and men I had met on
    the Wall. Mother and my sister always liked my pictures.

    'He handed me one that I had called "Maximus's
    Soldiers". It showed a row of fat wine-skins, and our old
    Doctor of the Hunno hospital snuffing at them. Each time
    that Maximus had taken troops out of Britain to help him
    to conquer Gaul, he used to send the garrisons more wine
    - to keep them quiet, I suppose. On the Wall, we always
    called a wine-skin a "Maximus". Oh, yes; and I had
    drawn them in Imperial helmets.

    "'Not long since," he went on, "men's names were
    sent up to Caesar for smaller jokes than this."

    "'True, Caesar," said Pertinax; "but you forget that
    was before I, your friend's friend, became such a
    good spear-thrower."

    'He did not actually point his hunting-spear at
    Maximus, but balanced it on his palm - so!

    "'I was speaking of time past," said Maximus, never
    fluttering an eyelid. "Nowadays one is only too pleased
    to find boys who can think for themselves, and their
    friends." He nodded at Pertinax. "Your Father lent me
    the letters, Parnesius, so you run no risk from me."

    "'None whatever," said Pertinax, and rubbed the
    spear-point on his sleeve.

    "'I have been forced to reduce the garrisons in Britain,
    because I need troops in Gaul. Now I come to take troops
    from the Wall itself," said he.

    "'I wish you joy of us," said Pertinax. "We're the last
    sweepings of the Empire - the men without hope.
    Myself, I'd sooner trust condemned criminals."

    "'You think so?" he said, quite seriously. "But it will
    only be till I win Gaul. One must always risk one's life, or
    one's soul, or one's peace - or some little thing."

    'Allo passed round the fire with the sizzling deer's
    meat. He served us two first.

    "'Ah!" said Maximus, waiting his turn. "I perceive
    you are in your own country. Well, you deserve it. They
    tell me you have quite a following among the Picts, Parnesius."

    "'I have hunted with them," I said. "Maybe I have a
    few friends among the heather."

    "'He is the only armoured man of you all who understands
    us," said Allo, and he began a long speech about
    our virtues, and how we had saved one of his grandchildren
    from a wolf the year before.'

    'Had you?' said Una.

    'Yes; but that was neither here nor there. The little
    green man orated like a - like Cicero. He made us out to
    be magnificent fellows. Maximus never took his eyes off
    our faces.

    "'Enough," he said. "I have heard Allo on you. I wish
    to hear you on the Picts."

    'I told him as much as I knew, and Pertinax helped me
    out. There is never harm in a Pict if you but take the
    trouble to find out what he wants. Their real grievance
    against us came from our burning their heather. The
    whole garrison of the Wall moved out twice a year, and
    solemnly burned the heather for ten miles North.
    Rutilianus, our General, called it clearing the country.
    The Picts, of course, scampered away, and all we did was
    to destroy their bee-bloom in the summer, and ruin their
    sheep-food in the spring.

    "'True, quite true," said Allo. "How can we make our
    holy heather-wine, if you burn our bee-pasture?"

    'We talked long, Maximus asking keen questions that
    showed he knew much and had thought more about the
    Picts. He said presently to me: "If I gave you the old
    Province of Valentia to govern, could you keep the Picts
    contented till I won Gaul? Stand away, so that you do not
    see Allo's face; and speak your own thoughts."

    "'No," I said. "You cannot remake that Province. The
    Picts have been free too long."

    "'Leave them their village councils, and let them
    furnish their own soldiers," he said. "You, I am sure,
    would hold the reins very lightly."

    "Even then, no," I said. "At least not now. They have
    been too oppressed by us to trust anything with a Roman
    name for years and years."

    'I heard old Allo behind me mutter: "Good child!"

    "'Then what do you recommend," said Maximus, "to
    keep the North quiet till I win Gaul?"

    "'Leave the Picts alone," I said. "Stop the heather-
    burning at once, and - they are improvident little animals -
    send them a shipload or two of corn now and then."

    "'Their own men must distribute it - not some
    cheating Greek accountant," said Pertinax.

    "'Yes, and allow them to come to our hospitals when
    they are sick," I said.

    "'Surely they would die first," said Maximus.

    "'Not if Parnesius brought them in," said Allo. "I
    could show you twenty wolf-bitten, bear-clawed Picts
    within twenty miles of here. But Parnesius must stay
    with them in hospital, else they would go mad with fear. "

    "'I see," said Maximus. "Like everything else in the
    world, it is one man's work. You, I think, are that one man."

    "'Pertinax and I are one," I said.

    "'As you please, so long as you work. Now, Allo, you
    know that I mean your people no harm. Leave us to talk
    together," said Maximus.

    "'No need!" said Allo. "I am the corn between the
    upper and lower millstones. I must know what the lower
    millstone means to do. These boys have spoken the truth
    as far as they know it. I, a Prince, will tell you the rest. I
    am troubled about the Men of the North." He squatted
    like a hare in the heather, and looked over his shoulder.

    "'I also," said Maximus, "or I should not be here."

    "'Listen," said Allo. "Long and long ago the Winged
    Hats" - he meant the Northmen - "came to our beaches
    and said, 'Rome falls! Push her down!' We fought you.
    You sent men. We were beaten. After that we said to the
    Winged Hats, 'You are liars! Make our men alive that
    Rome killed, and we will believe you.' They went away
    ashamed. Now they come back bold, and they tell the old
    tale, which we begin to believe - that Rome falls!"

    "'Give me three years' peace on the Wall," cried
    Maximus, "and I will show you and all the ravens how
    they lie!"

    "'Ah, I wish it too! I wish to save what is left of the corn
    from the millstones. But you shoot us Picts when we
    come to borrow a little iron from the Iron Ditch; you burn
    our heather, which is all our crop; you trouble us with
    your great catapults. Then you hide behind the Wall, and
    scorch us with Greek fire. How can I keep my young men
    from listening to the Winged Hats - in winter especially,
    when we are hungry? My young men will say, 'Rome can
    neither fight nor rule. She is taking her men out of
    Britain. The Winged Hats will help us to push down the
    Wall. Let us show them the secret roads across the bogs.'
    Do I want that? No!" He spat like an adder. "I would keep
    the secrets of my people though I were burned alive. My
    two children here have spoken truth. Leave us Picts
    alone. Comfort us, and cherish us, and feed us from far
    off - with the hand behind the back. Parnesius understands
    us. Let him have rule on the Wall, and I will hold
    my young men quiet for" - he ticked it off on his fingers -
    "one year easily: the next year not so easily: the third
    year, perhaps! See, I give you three years. If then you do
    not show us that Rome is strong in men and terrible in
    arms, the Winged Hats, I tell you, will sweep down the
    Wall from either sea till they meet in the middle, and you
    will go. I shall not grieve over that, but well I know tribe
    never helps tribe except for one price. We Picts will go
    too. The Winged Hats will grind us to this!" He tossed a
    handful of dust in the air.

    "'Oh, Roma Dea!" said Maximus, half aloud. "It is
    always one man's work- always and everywhere!"

    "And one man's life," said Allo. "You are Emperor,
    but not a God. You may die."

    "'I have thought of that too," said he. "Very good. If
    this wind holds, I shall be at the East end of the Wall by
    morning. Tomorrow, then, I shall see you two when I
    inspect, and I will make you Captains of the Wall for this work."

    "'One instant, Caesar," said Pertinax. "All men have
    their price. I am not bought yet."

    "'Do you also begin to bargain so early?" said
    Maximus. "Well?"

    "'Give me justice against my uncle Icenus, the
    Duumvir of Divio in Gaul," he said.

    "'Only a life? I thought it would be money or an office.
    Certainly you shall have him. Write his name on these
    tablets - on the red side; the other is for the living!" and
    Maximus held out his tablets.

    "'He is of no use to me dead," said Pertinax. "My
    mother is a widow. I am far off. I am not sure he pays her
    all her dowry."

    "'No matter. My arm is reasonably long. We will look
    through your uncle's accounts in due time. Now,
    farewell till tomorrow, O Captains of the Wall!"

    'We saw him grow small across the heather as he
    walked to the galley. There were Picts, scores, each side
    of him, hidden behind stones. He never looked left or
    right. He sailed away southerly, full spread before the
    evening breeze, and when we had watched him out to
    sea, we were silent. We understood that Earth bred few
    men like to this man.

    'Presently Allo brought the ponies and held them for
    us to mount - a thing he had never done before.

    "'Wait awhile," said Pertinax, and he made a little altar
    of cut turf, and strewed heather-bloom atop, and laid
    upon it a letter from a girl in Gaul.

    "'What do you do, O my friend?" I said.

    "'I sacrifice to my dead youth," he answered, and,
    when the flames had consumed the letter, he ground
    them out with his heel. Then we rode back to that Wall of
    which we were to be Captains.'

    Parnesius stopped. The children sat still, not even
    asking if that were all the tale. Puck beckoned, and
    pointed the way out of the wood. 'Sorry,' he whispered,
    'but you must go now.'

    'We haven't made him angry, have we?' said Una. 'He
    looks so far off, and - and - thinky.'

    'Bless your heart, no. Wait till tomorrow. It won't be
    long. Remember, you've been playing Lays of Ancient Rome.'

    And as soon as they had scrambled through their gap
    where Oak, Ash and Thorn grew, that was all they remembered.



    A Song to Mithras




    Mithras, God of the Morning, our trumpets waken the Wall!
    'Rome is above the Nations, but Thou art over all!'
    Now as the names are answered, and the guards are marched away,
    Mithras, also a soldier, give us strength for the day!

    Mithras, God of the Noontide, the heather swims in the heat,
    Our helmets scorch our foreheads, our sandals burn our feet.
    Now in the ungirt hour, now ere we blink and drowse,
    Mithras, also a soldier, keep us true to our vows!

    Mithras, God of the Sunset, low on the Western main,
    Thou descending immortal, immortal to rise again!
    Now when the watch is ended, now when the wine is drawn,
    Mithras, also a soldier, keep us pure till the dawn!

    Mithras, God of the Midnight, here where the great bull dies,
    Look on Thy children in darkness. Oh, take our sacrifice!
    Many roads Thou hast fashioned: all of them lead to the Light!
    Mithras, also a soldier, teach us to die aright!




    THE WINGED HATS





    The next day happened to be what they called a Wild
    Afternoon. Father and Mother went out to pay calls; Miss
    Blake went for a ride on her bicycle, and they were left all
    alone till eight o'clock.

    When they had seen their dear parents and their dear
    preceptress politely off the premises they got a cabbage-
    leaf full of raspberries from the gardener, and a Wild Tea
    from Ellen. They ate the raspberries to prevent their
    squashing, and they meant to divide the cabbage-leaf
    with Three Cows down at the Theatre, but they came
    across a dead hedgehog which they simply had to bury,
    and the leaf was too useful to waste.

    Then they went on to the Forge and found old Hobden
    the hedger at home with his son, the Bee Boy, who is not
    quite right in his head, but who can pick up swarms of
    bees in his naked hands; and the Bee Boy told them the
    rhyme about the slow-worm:

         'If I had eyes as I could see,
         No mortal man would trouble me.'

    They all had tea together by the hives, and Hobden
    said the loaf-cake which Ellen had given them was almost
    as good as what his wife used to make, and he showed
    them how to set a wire at the right height for hares. They
    knew about rabbits already.

    Then they climbed up Long Ditch into the lower end of
    Far Wood. This is sadder and darker than the Volaterrae
    end because of an old marl-pit full of black water, where
    weepy, hairy moss hangs round the stumps of the
    willows and alders. But the birds come to perch on the
    dead branches, and Hobden says that the bitter willow-
    water is a sort of medicine for sick animals.

    They sat down on a felled oak-trunk in the shadows of
    the beech undergrowth, and were looping the wires
    Hobden had given them, when they saw Parnesius.

    'How quietly you came!'said Una, moving up to make
    room. 'Where's Puck?'

    'The Faun and I have disputed whether it is better that I
    should tell you all my tale, or leave it untold,' he replied.

    'I only said that if he told it as it happened you
    wouldn't understand it,' said Puck, jumping up like a
    squirrel from behind the log.
    'I don't understand all of it,' said Una, 'but I like
    hearing about the little Picts.'

    'What I can't understand,' said Dan, 'is how Maximus
    knew all about the Picts when he was over in Gaul.'

    'He who makes himself Emperor anywhere must
    know everything, everywhere,' said Parnesius. 'We had
    this much from Maximus's mouth after the Games.'

    'Games? What Games?' said Dan.

    Parnesius stretched his arm out stiffly, thumb pointed
    to the ground. 'Gladiators! That sort of game,' he said.
    'There were two days' Games in his honour when he
    landed all unexpected at Segedunum on the East end of
    the Wall. Yes, the day after we had met him we held two
    days' Games; but I think the greatest risk was run, not by
    the poor wretches on the sand, but by Maximus. In the
    old days the Legions kept silence before their Emperor.
    So did not we! You could hear the solid roar run West
    along the Wall as his chair was carried rocking through
    the crowds. The garrison beat round him - clamouring,
    clowning, asking for pay, for change of quarters, for
    anything that came into their wild heads. That chair was
    like a little boat among waves, dipping and falling,
    but always rising again after one had shut the eyes.'
    Parnesius shivered.
    'Were they angry with him?' said Dan.

    'No more angry than wolves in a cage when their
    trainer walks among them. If he had turned his back an
    instant, or for an instant had ceased to hold their eyes,
    there would have been another Emperor made on the
    Wall that hour. Was it not so, Faun?'

    'So it was. So it always will be,' said Puck.

    'Late in the evening his messenger came for us, and we
    followed to the Temple of Victory, where he lodged with
    Rutilianus, the General of the Wall. I had hardly seen the
    General before, but he always gave me leave when I
    wished to take Heather. He was a great glutton, and kept
    five Asian cooks, and he came of a family that believed in
    oracles. We could smell his good dinner when we
    entered, but the tables were empty. He lay snorting on a
    couch. Maximus sat apart among long rolls of accounts.
    Then the doors were shut.

    "'These are your men," said Maximus to the General,
    who propped his eye-corners open with his gouty
    fingers, and stared at us like a fish.

    "'I shall know them again, Caesar," said Rutilianus.

    "Very good," said Maximus. "Now hear! You are not
    to move man or shield on the Wall except as these boys
    shall tell you. You will do nothing, except eat, without
    their permission. They are the head and arms. You are
    the belly!"

    "'As Caesar pleases," the old man grunted. "If my pay
    and profits are not cut, you may make my Ancestors'
    Oracle my master. Rome has been! Rome has been!"
    Then he turned on his side to sleep.

    "'He has it," said Maximus. "We will get to what I need."

    'He unrolled full copies of the number of men and
    supplies on the Wall - down to the sick that very day in
    Hunno Hospital. Oh, but I groaned when his pen
    marked off detachment after detachment of our best - of
    our least worthless men! He took two towers of our
    Scythians, two of our North British auxiliaries, two
    Numidian cohorts, the Dacians all, and half the Belgians.
    It was like an eagle pecking a carcass.

    "'And now, how many catapults have you?" He
    turned up a new list, but Pertinax laid his open hand there.

    "'No, Caesar," said he. "Do not tempt the Gods too
    far. Take men, or engines, but not both; else we refuse."'
    'Engines?' said Una.

    'The catapults of the Wall - huge things forty feet high
    to the head - firing nets of raw stone or forged bolts.
    Nothing can stand against them. He left us our catapults
    at last, but he took a Caesar's half of our men
    without pity. We were a shell when he rolled up the lists!

    "'Hail, Caesar! We, about to die, salute you!" said
    Pertinax, laughing. "If any enemy even leans against the
    Wall now, it will tumble."

    "'Give me the three years Allo spoke of," he
    answered, "and you shall have twenty thousand men of
    your own choosing up here. But now it is a gamble - a
    game played against the Gods, and the stakes are Britain,
    Gaul, and perhaps Rome. You play on my side?"

    "'We will play, Caesar," I said, for I had never met a
    man like this man.

    ",Good. Tomorrow," said he, "I proclaim you
    Captains of the Wall before the troops."

    'So we went into the moonlight, where they were
    cleaning the ground after the Games. We saw great Roma
    Dea atop of the Wall, the frost on her helmet, and her
    spear pointed towards the North Star. We saw the
    twinkle of night-fires all along the guard-towers, and the
    line of the black catapults growing smaller and smaller in
    the distance. All these things we knew till we were
    weary; but that night they seemed very strange to us,
    because the next day we knew we were to be their masters.

    'The men took the news well; but when Maximus went
    away with half our strength, and we had to spread
    ourselves into the emptied towers, and the townspeople
    complained that trade would be ruined, and the autumn
    gales blew - it was dark days for us two. Here Pertinax
    was more than my right hand. Being born and bred
    among the great country houses in Gaul, he knew the
    proper words to address to all - from Roman-born
    Centurions to those dogs of the Third - the Libyans.
    And he spoke to each as though that man were as
    high-minded as himself. Now I saw so strongly what
    things were needed to be done, that I forgot things
    are only accomplished by means of men. That was a mistake.

    'I feared nothing from the Picts, at least for that year,
    but Allo warned me that the Winged Hats would soon
    come in from the sea at each end of the Wall to prove to
    the Picts how weak we were. So I made ready in haste,
    and none too soon. I shifted our best men to the ends of
    the Wall, and set up screened catapults by the beach. The
    Winged Hats would drive in before the snow-squalls -
    ten or twenty boats at a time - on Segedunum or Ituna,
    according as the wind blew.

    'Now a ship coming in to land men must furl her sail. If
    you wait till you see her men gather up the sail's foot,
    your catapults can jerk a net of loose stones (bolts only cut
    through the cloth) into the bag of it. Then she turns over,
    and the sea makes everything clean again. A few men
    may come ashore, but very few ... It was not hard work,
    except the waiting on the beach in blowing sand and
    snow. And that was how we dealt with the Winged Hats
    that winter.

    'Early in the spring, when the East winds blow like
    skinning-knives, they gathered again off Segedunum
    with many ships. Allo told me they would never rest till
    they had taken a tower in open fight. Certainly they
    fought in the open. We dealt with them thoroughly
    through a long day: and when all was finished, one man
    dived clear of the wreckage of his ship, and swam
    towards shore. I waited, and a wave tumbled him at my feet.

    'As I stooped, I saw he wore such a medal as I wear.'
    Parnesius raised his hand to his neck. 'Therefore, when
    he could speak, I addressed him a certain Question
    which can only be answered in a certain manner. He
    answered with the necessary Word - the Word that
    belongs to the Degree of Gryphons in the science of
    Mithras my God. I put my shield over him till he could
    stand up. You see I am not short, but he was a head taller
    than I. He said: "What now?" I said: "At your pleasure,
    my brother, to stay or go."

    'He looked out across the surf. There remained one
    ship unhurt, beyond range of our catapults . I checked the
    catapults and he waved her in. She came as a hound
    comes to a master. When she was yet a hundred paces
    from the beach, he flung back his hair, and swam out.
    They hauled him in, and went away. I knew that those
    who worship Mithras are many and of all races, so I did
    not think much more upon the matter.

    'A month later I saw Allo with his horses - by the
    Temple of Pan, O Faun - and he gave me a great necklace
    of gold studded with coral.

    'At first I thought it was a bribe from some tradesman
    in the town - meant for old Rutilianus. "Nay," said Allo.
    "This is a gift from Amal, that Winged Hat whom you
    saved on the beach. He says you are a Man."

    "'He is a Man, too. Tell him I can wear his gift," I answered.

    "'Oh, Amal is a young fool; but ' speaking as sensible
    men, your Emperor is doing such great things in Gaul
    that the Winged Hats are anxious to be his friends, or,
    better still, the friends of his servants. They think you
    and Pertinax could lead them to victories." Allo looked at
    me like a one-eyed raven.

    "'Allo," I said, "you are the corn between the two
    millstones. Be content if they grind evenly, and don't
    thrust your hand between them."

    "'I?" said Allo. "I hate Rome and the Winged Hats
    equally; but if the Winged Hats thought that some day
    you and Pertinax might join them against Maximus, they
    would leave you in peace while you considered. Time is
    what we need - you and I and Maximus. Let me carry a
    pleasant message back to the Winged Hats - something
    for them to make a council over. We barbarians are all
    alike. We sit up half the night to discuss anything a
    Roman says. Eh?"

    "'We have no men. We must fight with words," said
    Pertinax. "Leave it to Allo and me."

    'So Allo carried word back to the Winged Hats that we
    would not fight them if they did not fight us; and they (I
    think they were a little tired of losing men in the sea)
    agreed to a sort of truce. I believe Allo, who being a
    horse-dealer loved lies, also told them we might some
    day rise against Maximus as Maximus had risen against Rome.

    'Indeed, they permitted the corn-ships which I sent to
    the Picts to pass North that season without harm. Therefore
    the Picts were well fed that winter, and since they
    were in some sort my children, I was glad of it. We had
    only two thousand men on the Wall, and I wrote many
    times to Maximus and begged - prayed - him to send me
    only one cohort of my old North British troops. He could
    not spare them. He needed them to win more victories in Gaul.

    'Then came news that he had defeated and slain the
    Emperor Gratian, and thinking he must now be secure, I
    wrote again for men. He answered: "You will learn that I
    have at last settled accounts with the pup Gratian. There was no
    need that he should have died, but he became confused and lost
    his head, which is a bad thing to befall any Emperor. Tell your
    Father I am content to drive two mules only; for unless my old
    General's son thinks himself destined to destroy me, I shall rest
    Emperor of Gaul and Britain, and then you, my two children,
    will presently get all the men you need. just now I can spare none. "'

    'What did he mean by his General's son?' said Dan.

    'He meant Theodosius Emperor of Rome, who was the
    son of Theodosius the General under whom Maximus
    had fought in the old Pict War. The two men never loved
    each other, and when Gratian made the younger
    Theodosius Emperor of the East (at least, so I've heard),
    Maximus carried on the war to the second generation. It
    was his fate, and it was his fall. But Theodosius the
    Emperor is a good man. As I know.' Parnesius was silent
    for a moment and then continued.

    'I wrote back to Maximus that, though we had peace on
    the Wall, I should be happier with a few more men and
    some new catapults. He answered: "You must live a little
    longer under the shadow of my victories, till I can see what
    young Theodosius intends. He may welcome me as a brother-
    Emperor, or he may be preparing an army. In either case I
    cannot spare men just now. "

    'But he was always saying that,' cried Una.

    'It was true. He did not make excuses; but thanks, as he
    said, to the news of his victories, we had no trouble on
    the Wall for a long, long time. The Picts grew fat as their
    own sheep among the heather, and as many of my men
    as lived were well exercised in their weapons. Yes, the
    Wall looked strong. For myself, I knew how weak we
    were. I knew that if even a false rumour of any defeat to
    Maximus broke loose among the Winged Hats, they
    might come down in earnest, and then - the Wall must
    go! For the Picts I never cared, but in those years I learned
    something of the strength of the Winged Hats. They
    increased their strength every day, but I could not increase
    my men. Maximus had emptied Britain behind us,
    and I felt myself to be a man with a rotten stick standing
    before a broken fence to turn bulls.

    'Thus, my friends, we lived on the Wall, waiting -
    waiting - waiting for the men that Maximus never sent.

    'Presently he wrote that he was preparing an army
    against Theodosius. He wrote - and Pertinax read it over
    my shoulder in our quarters: "Tell your Father that my
    destiny orders me to drive three mules or be torn in pieces by
    them. I hope within a year to finish with Theodosius, son of
    Theodosius, once and for all. Then you shall have Britain to
    rule, and Pertinax, if he chooses, Gaul. Today I wish strongly
    you were with me to beat my Auxiliaries into shape. Do not, I
    pray you, believe any rumour of my sickness. I have a little
    evil in my old body which I shall cure by riding swiftly into Rome. "

    'Said Pertinax: "It is finished with Maximus. He writes
    as a man without hope. I, a man without hope, can see
    this. What does he add at the bottom of the roll? 'Tell
    Pertinax I have met his late Uncle, the Duumvir of Divio, and
    that he accounted to me quite truthfully for all his Mother's
    monies. I have sent her with a fitting escort, for she is the mother
    of a hero, to Nicaea, where the climate is warm.'

    "'That is proof," said Pertinax. "Nicaea is not far by sea
    from Rome. A woman there could take ship and fly to
    Rome in time of war. Yes, Maximus foresees his death,
    and is fulfilling his promises one by one. But I am glad my
    uncle met him."'

    "'You think blackly today?" I asked.

    "'I think truth. The Gods weary of the play we have
    played against them. Theodosius will destroy Maximus.
    It is finished!"

    "'Will you write him that?" I said.

    "'See what I shall write," he answered, and he took
    pen and wrote a letter cheerful as the light of day, tender
    as a woman's and full of jests. Even I, reading over his
    shoulder, took comfort from it till - I saw his face!

    "'And now," he said, sealing it, "we be two dead men,
    my brother. Let us go to the Temple."
    'We prayed awhile to Mithras, where we had many
    times prayed before. After that, we lived day by day
    among evil rumours till winter came again.

    'It happened one morning that we rode to the East
    shore, and found on the beach a fair-haired man, half
    frozen, bound to some broken planks. Turning him over,
    we saw by his belt-buckle that he was a Goth of an
    Eastern Legion. Suddenly he opened his eyes and cried
    loudly, "He is dead! The letters were with me, but the
    Winged Hats sank the ship." So saying, he died between
    our hands.

    'We asked not who was dead. We knew! We raced
    before the driving snow to Hunno, thinking perhaps Allo
    might be there. We found him already at our stables, and
    he saw by our faces what we had heard.

    "'It was in a tent by the sea," he stammered. "He was
    beheaded by Theodosius. He sent a letter to you, written
    while he waited to be slain. The Winged Hats met the
    ship and took it. The news is running through the
    heather like fire. Blame me not! I cannot hold back my
    young men any more."

    "'I would we could say as much for our men," said
    Pertinax, laughing. "But, Gods be praised, they cannot
    run away."

    "'What do you do?" said Allo. "I bring an order - a
    message - from the Winged Hats that you join them with
    your men, and march South to plunder Britain."

    "'It grieves me," said Pertinax, "but we are stationed
    here to stop that thing."

    "'If I carry back such an answer they will kill me," said
    Allo. "I always promised the Winged Hats that you
    would rise when Maximus fell. I - I did not think he could fall."

    "'Alas! my poor barbarian," said Pertinax, still
    laughing. "Well, you have sold us too many good ponies
    to be thrown back to your friends. We will make you a
    prisoner, although you are an ambassador."

    "'Yes, that will be best," said Allo, holding out a
    halter. We bound him lightly, for he was an old man.

    "'Presently the Winged Hats may come to look for
    you, and that will give us more time. See how the habit of
    playing for time sticks to a man!" said Pertinax, as he tied
    the rope.

    "'No," I said. "Time may help. If Maximus wrote us a
    letter while he was a prisoner, Theodosius must have
    sent the ship that brought it. If he can send ships, he can
    send men."

    "'How will that profit us?" said Pertinax. "We serve
    Maximus, not Theodosius. Even if by some miracle of the
    Gods Theodosius down South sent and saved the Wall,
    we could not expect more than the death Maximus died. "

    "'It concerns us to defend the Wall, no matter what
    Emperor dies, or makes die," I said.

    "'That is worthy of your brother the philosopher,"
    said Pertinax. "Myself I am without hope, so I do not say
    solemn and stupid things! Rouse the Wall!"

    'We armed the Wall from end to end; we told the
    officers that there was a rumour of Maximus's death
    which might bring down the Winged Hats, but we were
    sure, even if it were true, that Theodosius, for the sake of
    Britain, would send us help. Therefore, we must stand
    fast ... My friends, it is above all things strange to see
    how men bear ill news! Often the strongest till then
    become the weakest, while the weakest, as it were, reach
    up and steal strength from the Gods. So it was with us.
    Yet my Pertinax by his jests and his courtesy and
    his labours had put heart and training into our poor
    numbers during the past years - more than I should have
    thought possible. Even our Libyan Cohort - the
    Third - stood up in their padded cuirasses and did not whimper.
    'In three days came seven chiefs and elders of the
    Winged Hats. Among them was that tall young man,
    Amal, whom I had met on the beach, and he smiled when
    he saw my necklace. We made them welcome, for they
    were ambassadors. We showed them Allo, alive but
    bound. They thought we had killed him, and I saw it
    would not have vexed them if we had. Allo saw it too,
    and it vexed him. Then in our quarters at Hunno we came
    to council.

    'They said that Rome was falling, and that we must join
    them. They offered me all South Britain to govern after
    they had taken a tribute out of it.

    'I answered, "Patience. This Wall is not weighed off
    like plunder. Give me proof that my General is dead."

    "'Nay," said one elder, "prove to us that he lives"; and
    another said cunningly, "What will you give us if we read
    you his last words?"

    "'We are not merchants to bargain," cried Amal.
    "Moreover, I owe this man my life. He shall have his
    proof." He threw across to me a letter (well I knew the
    seal) from Maximus.

    "'We took this out of the ship we sank," he cried. "I
    cannot read, but I know one sign, at least, which makes
    me believe. " He showed me a dark stain on the outer roll
    that my heavy heart perceived was the valiant blood of Maximus.

    "'Read!" said Amal. "Read, and then let us hear whose
    servants you are!"

    'Said Pertinax, very softly, after he had looked through
    it: "I will read it all. Listen, barbarians!" He read that
    which I have carried next my heart ever since.'

    Parnesius drew from his neck a folded and spotted
    piece of parchment, and began in a hushed voice:

    "'To Parnesius and Pertinax, the not unworthy Captains of
    the Wall, from Maximus, once Emperor of Gaul and Britain,
    now prisoner waiting death by the sea in the camp of Theodosius
    - Greeting and Goodbye! "

    "'Enough," said young Amal; "there is your proof!
    You must join us now!"

    'Pertinax looked long and silently at him, till that fair
    man blushed like a girl. Then read Pertinax:

    "'I have joyfully done much evil in my life to those who have
    wished me evil, but if ever I did any evil to you two I repent, and
    I ask your forgiveness. The three mules which I strove to drive
    have torn me in pieces as your Father prophesied. The naked
    swords wait at the tent door to give me the death I gave to
    Gratian. Therefore I, your General and your emperor, send you
    free and honourable dismissal from my service, which you
    entered, not for money or office, but, as it makes me warm to
    believe, because you loved me!"

    "'By the Light of the Sun," Amal broke in. "This was in
    some sort a Man! We may have been mistaken in his servants!"

    'And Pertinax read on: "You gave me the time for which I
    asked. If I have failed to use it, do not lament. We have gambled
    very splendidly against the Gods, but they hold weighted dice,
    and I must pay the forfeit. Remember, I have been; but Rome is;
    and Rome will be. Tell Pertinax his Mother is in safety at
    Nicaea, and her monies are in charge of the Prefect at Antipolis.
    Make my remembrances to your Father and to your Mother,
    whose friendship was great gain to me. Give also to my little
    Picts and to the Winged Hats such messages as their thick heads
    can understand. I would have sent you three Legions this very
    day if all had gone aright. Do not forget me. We have worked
    together. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell! "
    'Now, that was my Emperor's last letter.' (The children
    heard the parchment crackle as Parnesius returned it to
    its place.)

    "'I was mistaken," said Amal. "The servants of such a
    man will sell nothing except over the sword. I am glad of
    it." He held out his hand to me.

    "'But Maximus has given you your dismissal," said an
    elder. "You are certainly free to serve - or to rule - whom
    you please. Join - do not follow - join us!"

    "'We thank you," said Pertinax. "But Maximus tells us
    to give you such messages as - pardon me, but I use his
    words - your thick heads can understand." He pointed
    through the door to the foot of a catapult wound up.

    "'We understand," said an elder. "The Wall must be
    won at a price?"

    "'It grieves me," said Pertinax, laughing, "but so it
    must be won," and he gave them of our best Southern wine.

    'They drank, and wiped their yellow beards in silence
    till they rose to go.

    'Said Amal, stretching himself (for they were barbarians):
    "We be a goodly company; I wonder what the
    ravens and the dogfish will make of some of us before this
    snow melts."

    "'Think rather what Theodosius may send," I
    answered; and though they laughed, I saw that my
    chance shot troubled them.

    'Only old Allo lingered behind a little.

    "'You see," he said, winking and blinking, "I am no
    more than their dog. When I have shown their men the
    secret short ways across our bogs, they will kick me like one."

    "'Then I should not be in haste to show them those
    ways," said Pertinax, "till I was sure that Rome could not
    save the Wall."

    "'You think so? Woe is me!" said the old man. "I only
    wanted peace for my people," and he went out stumbling
    through the snow behind the tall Winged Hats.

    'In this fashion then, slowly, a day at a time, which is
    very bad for doubting troops, the War came upon us. At
    first the Winged Hats swept in from the sea as they had
    done before, and there we met them as before - with the
    catapults; and they sickened of it. Yet for a long time they
    would not trust their duck-legs on land, and I think,
    when it came to revealing the secrets of the tribe, the little
    Picts were afraid or ashamed to show them all the roads
    across the heather. I had this from a Pict prisoner. They
    were as much our spies as our enemies, for the Winged
    Hats oppressed them, and took their winter stores. Ah,
    foolish Little People!

    'Then the Winged Hats began to roll us up from each
    end of the Wall. I sent runners Southward to see what the
    news might be in Britain, but the wolves were very bold
    that winter, among the deserted stations where the
    troops had once been, and none came back. We had
    trouble, too, with the forage for the ponies along the
    Wall. I kept ten, and so did Pertinax. We lived and slept
    in the saddle, riding east or west, and we ate our worn-out
    ponies. The people of the town also made us some
    trouble till I gathered them all in one quarter behind
    Hunno. We broke down the Wall on either side of it to
    make as it were a citadel. Our men fought better in close order.

    'By the end of the second month we were deep in the
    War as a man is deep in a snowdrift, or in a dream. I think
    we fought in our sleep. At least I know I have gone on the
    Wall and come off again, remembering nothing between,
    though my throat was harsh with giving orders, and my
    sword, I could see, had been used.

    'The Winged Hats fought like wolves - all in a pack.
    Where they had suffered most, there they charged in
    most hotly. This was hard for the defenders, but it held
    them from sweeping on into Britain.

    'In those days Pertinax and I wrote on the plaster of the
    bricked archway into Valentia the names of the towers,
    and the days on which they fell one by one. We wished
    for some record.

    'And the fighting? The fight was always hottest to left
    and right of the great statue of Roma Dea, near to
    Rutilianus's house. By the Light of the Sun, that old fat
    man, whom we had not considered at all, grew young
    again among the trumpets! I remember he said his sword
    was an oracle! "Let us consult the Oracle," he would say,
    and put the handle against his ear, and shake his head
    wisely. "And this day is allowed Rutilianus to live," he
    would say, and, tucking up his cloak, he would puff and
    pant and fight well. Oh, there were jests in plenty on the
    Wall to take the place of food!

    'We endured for two months and seventeen days -
    always being pressed from three sides into a smaller
    space. Several times Allo sent in word that help was
    at hand. We did not believe it, but it cheered our men.
    'The end came not with shootings of joy, but, like the
    rest, as in a dream. The Winged Hats suddenly left us in
    peace for one night and the next day; which is too long for
    spent men. We slept at first lightly, expecting to be
    roused, and then like logs, each where he lay. May you
    never need such sleep! When I waked our towers were
    full of strange, armed men, who watched us snoring. I
    roused Pertinax, and we leaped up together.

    "'What?" said a young man in clean armour. "Do you
    fight against Theodosius? Look!"

    'North we looked over the red snow. No Winged Hats
    were there. South we looked over the white snow, and
    behold there were the Eagles of two strong Legions
    encamped. East and west we saw flame and fighting, but
    by Hunno all was still.

    "'Trouble no more," said the young man. "Rome's
    arm is long. Where are the Captains of the Wall?"

    'We said we were those men.

    "'But you are old and grey-haired," he cried.
    "Maximus said that they were boys."

    "'Yes, that was true some years ago," said Pertinax.
    "What is our fate to be, you fine and well-fed child?"

    "'I am called Ambrosius, a secretary of the Emperor,"
    he answered. "Show me a certain letter which Maximus
    wrote from a tent at Aquileia, and perhaps I will believe."

    'I took it from my breast, and when he had read it he
    saluted us, saying: "Your fate is in your own hands. If
    you choose to serve Theodosius, he will give you a
    Legion. If it suits you to go to your homes, we will give
    you a Triumph."

    "'I would like better a bath, wine, food, razors, soaps,
    oils, and scents," said Pertinax, laughing.

    "'Oh, I see you are a boy," said Ambrosius. "And
    you?" turning to me.

    "'We bear no ill-will against Theodosius, but in War-"
    I began.

    "'In War it is as it is in Love," said Pertinax. "Whether
    she be good or bad, one gives one's best once, to one
    only. That given, there remains no second worth giving
    or taking."

    "'That is true," said Ambrosius. "I was with Maximus
    before he died. He warned Theodosius that you would
    never serve him, and frankly I say I am sorry for my Emperor."

    "'He has Rome to console him," said Pertinax. "I ask
    you of your kindness to let us go to our homes and get
    this smell out of our nostrils."

    'None the less they gave us a Triumph!'

    'It was well earned,' said Puck, throwing some leaves
    into the still water of the marlpit. The black, oily circles
    spread dizzily as the children watched them.

    'I want to know, oh, ever so many things,' said Dan.
    'What happened to old Allo? Did the Winged Hats ever
    come back? And what did Amal do?'

    'And what happened to the fat old General with the
    five cooks?' said Una. 'And what did your Mother say
    when you came home? ...'

    'She'd say you're settin' too long over this old pit, so
    late as 'tis already,'said old Hobden's voice behind them.
    'Hst!'he whispered.

    He stood still, for not twenty paces away a magnificent
    dog-fox sat on his haunches and looked at the children as
    though he were an old friend of theirs.

    'Oh, Mus' Reynolds, Mus' Reynolds!' said Hobden,
    under his breath. 'If I knowed all was inside your head,
    I'd know something wuth knowin'. Mus' Dan an' Miss
    Una, come along o' me while I lock up my liddle henhouse.'



    A Pict Song




    Rome never looks where she treads,
    Always her heavy hooves fall
    On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads;
    And Rome never heeds when we bawl.
    Her sentries pass on - that is all,
    And we gather behind them in hordes,
    And plot to reconquer the Wall,
    With only our tongues for our swords.

    We are the Little Folk - we!
    Too little to love or to hate.
    Leave us alone and you'll see
    How we can drag down the Great!
    We are the worm in the wood!
    We are the rot in the root!
    We are the germ in the blood!
    We are the thorn in the foot!

    Mistletoe killing an oak -
    Rats gnawing cables in two -
    Moths making holes in a cloak -
    How they must love what they do!
    Yes - and we Little Folk too,
    We are as busy as they -
    Working our works out of view -
    Watch, and you'll see it some day!

    No indeed! We are not strong,
    But we know Peoples that are.
    Yes, and we'll guide them along,
    To smash and destroy you in War!
    We shall be slaves just the same?
    Yes, we have always been slaves,
    But you - you will die of the shame,
    And then we shall dance on your graves!


    We are the Little Folk, we, etc.




    HAL O' THE DRAFT





    Prophets have honour all over the Earth,


    Except in the village where they were born,
    Where such as knew them boys from birth
    Nature-ally hold 'em in scorn.

    When Prophets are naughty and young and vain,
    They make a won'erful grievance of it;
    (You can see by their writings how they complain),
    But Oh, 'tis won'erful good for the Prophet!

    There's nothing Nineveh Town can give
    (Nor being swallowed by whales between),
    Makes up for the place where a man's folk live,
    That don't care nothing what he has been.
    He might ha' been that, or he might ha' been this,
    But they love and they hate him for what he is.



    A rainy afternoon drove Dan and Una over to play pirates
    in the Little Mill. If you don't mind rats on the rafters and
    oats in your shoes, the mill-attic, with its trap-doors
    and inscriptions on beams about floods and sweethearts,
    is a splendid place. It is lighted by a foot-square window,
    called Duck Window, that looks across to Little Lindens
    Farm, and the spot where Jack Cade was killed.

    When they had climbed the attic ladder (they called it
    'the mainmast tree', out of the ballad of Sir Andrew
    Barton, and Dan 'swarved it with might and main', as the
    ballad says) they saw a man sitting on Duck Window-sill.
    He was dressed in a plum-coloured doublet and tight
    plum-coloured hose, and he drew busily in a red-edged book.

    'Sit ye! Sit ye!' Puck cried from a rafter overhead. 'See
    what it is to be beautiful! Sir Harry Dawe - pardon, Hal -
    says I am the very image of a head for a gargoyle.'

    The man laughed and raised his dark velvet cap to the
    children, and his grizzled hair bristled out in a stormy
    fringe. He was old - forty at least - but his eyes were
    young, with funny little wrinkles all round them. A
    satchel of embroidered leather hung from his broad belt,
    which looked interesting.

    'May we see?' said Una, coming forward.

    'Surely - sure-ly!' he said, moving up on the window-
    seat, and returned to his work with a silver-pointed
    pencil. Puck sat as though the grin were fixed for ever on
    his broad face, while they watched the quick, certain
    fingers that copied it. Presently the man took a reed pen
    from his satchel, and trimmed it with a little ivory knife,
    carved in the semblance of a fish.
    'Oh, what a beauty!' cried Dan.

    ''Ware fingers! That blade is perilous sharp. I made it
    myself of the best Low Country cross-bow steel. And so,
    too, this fish. When his back-fin travels to his tail - so - he
    swallows up the blade, even as the whale swallowed
    Gaffer Jonah ... Yes, and that's my inkhorn. I made the
    four silver saints round it. Press Barnabas's head. It
    opens, and then -'He dipped the trimmed pen, and with
    careful boldness began to put in the essential lines of
    Puck's rugged face, that had been but faintly revealed by
    the silver-point.

    The children gasped, for it fairly leaped from the page.

    As he worked, and the rain fell on the tiles, he talked -
    now clearly, now muttering, now breaking off to frown
    or smile at his work. He told them he was born at Little
    Lindens Farm, and his father used to beat him for drawing
    things instead of doing things, till an old priest called
    Father Roger, who drew illuminated letters in rich
    people's books, coaxed the parents to let him take the boy
    as a sort of painter's apprentice. Then he went with
    Father Roger to Oxford, where he cleaned plates and
    carried cloaks and shoes for the scholars of a College
    called Merton.

    'Didn't you hate that?' said Dan after a great many
    other questions.

    'I never thought on't. Half Oxford was building new
    colleges or beautifying the old, and she had called to her
    aid the master-craftsmen of all Christendie - kings in
    their trade and honoured of Kings. I knew them. I
    worked for them: that was enough. No wonder -' He stopped
    and laughed.

    'You became a great man, Hal,' said Puck.

    'They said so, Robin. Even Bramante said so.'

    'Why? What did you do?' Dan asked.

    The artist looked at him queerly. 'Things in stone and
    such, up and down England. You would not have heard
    of 'em. To come nearer home, I rebuilded this little St
    Barnabas' church of ours. It cost me more trouble and
    sorrow than aught I've touched in my life. But 'twas a
    sound lesson.'

    'Um,' said Dan. 'We've had lessons this morning.'

    'I'll not afflict ye, lad,' said Hal, while Puck roared.
    'Only 'tis strange to think how that little church was
    rebuilt, re-roofed, and made glorious, thanks to some
    few godly Sussex ironmasters, a Bristow sailor lad, a
    proud ass called Hal o' the Draft because, d'you see, he
    was always drawing and drafting; and'- he dragged the
    words slowly -'and a Scotch pirate.'

    'Pirate?' said Dan. He wriggled like a hooked fish.

    'Even that Andrew Barton you were singing of on
    the stair just now.' He dipped again in the inkwell, and
    held his breath over a sweeping line, as though he had
    forgotten everything else.

    'Pirates don't build churches, do they?' said Dan. 'Or
    do they?'

    'They help mightily,' Hal laughed. 'But you were at
    your lessons this morn, Jack Scholar.'

    'Oh, pirates aren't lessons. It was only Bruce and his
    silly old spider,' said Una. 'Why did Sir Andrew Barton
    help you?'
    'I question if he ever knew it,' said Hal, twinkling.
    'Robin, how a' mischief's name am I to tell these
    innocents what comes of sinful pride?'

    'Oh, we know all about that,' said Una pertly. 'If you
    get too beany - that's cheeky - you get sat upon, of course.'

    Hal considered a moment, pen in air, and Puck said
    some long words.

    'A,ha! that was my case too,' he cried. 'Beany - you say
    - but certainly I did not conduct myself well. I was proud
    of - of such things as porches - a Galilee porch at Lincoln
    for choice - proud of one Torrigiano's arm on my
    shoulder, proud of my knighthood when I made the gilt
    scroll-work for the Sovereign - our King's ship. But Father
    Roger sitting in Merton College Library, he did not forget
    me. At the top of my pride, when I and no other should
    have builded the porch at Lincoln, he laid it on me with a
    terrible forefinger to go back to my Sussex clays and
    rebuild, at my own charges, my own church, where us
    Dawes have been buried for six generations. "Out! Son of
    my Art!" said he. "Fight the Devil at home ere you call
    yourself a man and a craftsman." And I quaked, and I
    went ... How's yon, Robin?' He flourished the finished
    sketch before Puck.

    'Me! Me past peradventure,' said Puck, smirking like a
    man at a mirror. 'Ah, see! The rain has took off! I hate
    housen in daylight.'

    'Whoop! Holiday!' cried Hal, leaping up. 'Who's for
    my Little Lindens? We can talk there.'

    They tumbled downstairs, and turned past the
    dripping willows by the sunny mill-dam.

    'Body o' me,' said Hal, staring at the hop-garden,
    where the hops were just ready to blossom. 'What are
    these? Vines? No, not vines, and they twine the wrong
    way to beans.' He began to draw in his ready book.

    'Hops. New since your day,' said Puck. 'They're an
    herb of Mars, and their flowers dried flavour ale. We
    say -

         'Turkeys, Heresy, Hops, and Beer
         Came into England all in one year.'

    'Heresy I know. I've seen Hops - God be praised for
    their beauty! What is your Turkis?'

    The children laughed. They knew the Lindens turkeys,
    and as soon as they reached Lindens orchard on the hill
    the full flock charged at them.

    Out came Hal's book at once. 'Hoity-toity!' he cried.
    'Here's Pride in purple feathers! Here's wrathy contempt
    and the Pomps of the Flesh! How d'you call them?'

    'Turkeys! Turkeys!' the children shouted, as the old
    gobbler raved and flamed against Hal's plum-coloured hose.

    "Save Your Magnificence!' he said. 'I've drafted two
    good new things today.' And he doffed his cap to the
    bubbling bird.

    Then they walked through the grass to the knoll where
    Little Lindens stands. The old farmhouse, weather-tiled
    to the ground, took almost the colour of a blood-ruby in
    the afternoon light. The pigeons pecked at the mortar in
    the chimney-stacks; the bees that had lived under the
    tiles since it was built filled the hot August air with their
    booming; and the smell of the box-tree by the dairy-
    window mixed with the smell of earth after rain, bread
    after baking, and a tickle of wood-smoke.

    The farmer's wife came to the door, baby on arm,
    shaded her brows against the sun, stooped to pluck a
    sprig of rosemary, and turned down the orchard. The old
    spaniel in his barrel barked once or twice to show he was
    in charge of the empty house. Puck clicked back the
    garden-gate.

    'D'you marvel that I love it?' said Hal, in a whisper.
    'What can town folk know of the nature of housen - or land?'
    They perched themselves arow on the old hacked oak
    bench in Lindens garden, looking across the valley of the
    brook at the fern-covered dimples and hollows of the
    Forge behind Hobden's cottage. The old man was cutting
    a faggot in his garden by the hives. It was quite a second
    after his chopper fell that the chump of the blow reached
    their lazy ears.

    'Eh - yeh!' said Hal. 'I mind when where that old gaffer
    stands was Nether Forge - Master John Collins's
    foundry. Many a night has his big trip-hammer shook me
    in my bed here. Boom-bitty! Boom-bitty! If the wind was
    east, I could hear Master Tom Collins's forge at Stockens
    answering his brother, Boom-oop! Boom-oop! and midway
    between, Sir John Pelham's sledgehammers at Brightling
    would strike in like a pack o' scholars, and "Hic-haec-hoc"
    they'd say, "Hic-haec-hoc, " till I fell asleep. Yes. The valley
    was as full o' forges and fineries as a May shaw o'
    cuckoos. All gone to grass now!'

    'What did they make?' said Dan.
    'Guns for the King's ships - and for others. Serpentines
    and cannon mostly. When the guns were cast, down
    would come the King's Officers, and take our plough-
    oxen to haul them to the coast. Look! Here's one of the
    first and finest craftsmen of the Sea!'

    He fluttered back a page of his book, and showed
    them a young man's head. Underneath was written:
    'Sebastianus.'

    'He came down with a King's Order on Master John
    Collins for twenty serpentines (wicked little cannon they
    be!) to furnish a venture of ships. I drafted him thus
    sitting by our fire telling Mother of the new lands he'd
    find the far side the world. And he found them, too!
    There's a nose to cleave through unknown seas! Cabot
    was his name - a Bristol lad - half a foreigner. I set a heap
    by him. He helped me to my church-building.'

    'I thought that was Sir Andrew Barton,' said Dan.

    'Ay, but foundations before roofs,' Hal answered.
    'Sebastian first put me in the way of it. I had come down
    here, not to serve God as a craftsman should, but to show
    my people how great a craftsman I was. They cared not,
    and it served me right, one split straw for my craft or my
    greatness. What a murrain call had I, they said, to mell
    with old St Barnabas'? Ruinous the church had been since
    the Black Death, and ruinous she would remain; and I
    could hang myself in my new scaffold-ropes! Gentle and
    simple, high and low - the Hayes, the Fowles, the
    Fenners, the Collinses - they were all in a tale against me.
    Only Sir John Pelham up yonder at Brightling bade me
    heart-up and go on. Yet how could I? Did I ask Master
    Collins for his timber-tug to haul beams? The oxen had
    gone to Lewes after lime. Did he promise me a set of iron
    cramps or ties for the roof? They never came to hand, or
    else they were spaulty or cracked. So with everything.
    Nothing said, but naught done except I stood by them,
    and then done amiss. I thought the countryside was fair bewitched.'

    'It was, sure-ly,' said Puck, knees under chin. 'Did you
    never suspect ary one?'

    'Not till Sebastian came for his guns, and John Collins
    played him the same dog's tricks as he'd played me with
    my ironwork. Week in, week out, two of three serpentines
    would be flawed in the casting, and only fit, they
    said, to be re-melted. Then John Collins would shake his
    head, and vow he could pass no cannon for the King's
    service that were not perfect. Saints! How Sebastian
    stormed! I know, for we sat on this bench sharing our
    sorrows inter-common.

    'When Sebastian had fumed away six weeks at Lindens
    and gotten just six serpentines, Dirk Brenzett, Master of
    the Cygnet hoy, sends me word that the block of stone he
    was fetching me from France for our new font he'd hove
    overboard to lighten his ship, chased by Andrew Barton
    up to Rye Port.'

    'Ah! The pirate!' said Dan.

    'Yes. And while I am tearing my hair over this,
    Ticehurst Will, my best mason, comes to me shaking, and
    vowing that the Devil, horned, tailed, and chained, has
    run out on him from the church-tower, and the men
    would work there no more. So I took 'em off the foundations,
    which we were strengthening, and went into the
    Bell Tavern for a cup of ale. Says Master John Collins:
    "Have it your own way, lad; but if I was you, I'd take the
    sinnification o' the sign, and leave old Barnabas' Church
    alone!" And they all wagged their sinful heads, and
    agreed. Less afraid of the Devil than of me - as I saw later.

    'When I brought my sweet news to Lindens, Sebastian
    was limewashing the kitchen-beams for Mother. He
    loved her like a son.

    "'Cheer up, lad," he says. "God's where He was. Only
    you and I chance to be pure pute asses. We've been
    tricked, Hal, and more shame to me, a sailor, that I did
    not guess it before! You must leave your belfry alone,
    forsooth, because the Devil is adrift there; and I cannot
    get my serpentines because John Collins cannot cast
    them aright. Meantime Andrew Barton hawks off the
    Port of Rye. And why? To take those very serpentines
    which poor Cabot must whistle for; the said serpentines,
    I'll wager my share of new continents, being now hid
    away in St Barnabas' church-tower. Clear as the Irish
    coast at noonday!"

    "They'd sure never dare to do it," I said; "and, for
    another thing, selling cannon to the King's enemies is
    black treason - hanging and fine."

    "'It is sure, large profit. Men'll dare any gallows for
    that. I have been a trader myself," says he. "We must be
    upsides with 'em for the honour of Bristol."

    'Then he hatched a plot, sitting on the limewash
    bucket. We gave out to ride o' Tuesday to London and
    made a show of taking farewells of our friends - especially
    of Master John Collins. But at Wadhurst Woods we
    turned; rode home to the water-meadows; hid our horses
    in a willow-tot at the foot of the glebe, and, come night,
    stole a-tiptoe uphill to Barnabas' church again. A thick
    mist, and a moon striking through.
    'I had no sooner locked the tower-door behind us than
    over goes Sebastian full length in the dark.

    "'Pest!" he says. "Step high and feel low, Hal. I've
    stumbled over guns before."

    'I groped, and one by one - the tower was pitchy dark -
    I counted the lither barrels of twenty serpentines laid out
    on pease straw. No conceal at all!

    "'There's two demi-cannon my end," says Sebastian,
    slapping metal. "They'll be for Andrew Barton's lower
    deck. Honest - honest John Collins! So this is his ware-
    house, his arsenal, his armoury! Now see you why your
    pokings and pryings have raised the Devil in Sussex?
    You've hindered John's lawful trade for months," and he
    laughed where he lay.

    'A clay-cold tower is no fireside at midnight, so we
    climbed the belfry stairs, and there Sebastian trips over a
    cow-hide with its horns and tail.

    "'Aha! Your Devil has left his doublet! Does it become
    me, Hal?" He draws it on and capers in the shafts of
    window-moonlight - won'erful devilish-like. Then he
    sits on the stairs, rapping with his tail on a board, and his
    back-aspect was dreader than his front, and a howlet lit
    in, and screeched at the horns of him.

    "'If you'd keep out the Devil, shut the door," he
    whispered. "And that's another false proverb, Hal, for I
    can hear your tower-door opening."

    "'I locked it. Who a-plague has another key, then?" I said.

    "'All the congregation, to judge by their feet," he says,
    and peers into the blackness. "Still! Still, Hal! Hear 'em
    grunt! That's more o' my serpentines, I'll be bound. One
    - two - three - four they bear in! Faith, Andrew equips
    himself like an Admiral! Twenty-four serpentines in all!"

    'As if it had been an echo, we heard John Collins's
    voice come up all hollow: "Twenty-four serpentines and
    two demi-cannon. That's the full tally for Sir Andrew Barton."

    "'Courtesy costs naught," whispers Sebastian. "Shall
    I drop my dagger on his head?"

    "'They go over to Rye o' Thursday in the wool-wains,
    hid under the wool-packs. Dirk Brenzett meets them at
    Udimore, as before," says John.

    "'Lord! What a worn, handsmooth trade it is!" says
    Sebastian. "I lay we are the sole two babes in the village
    that have not our lawful share in the venture."

    'There was a full score folk below, talking like all
    Robertsbridge Market. We counted them by voice.

    'Master John Collins pipes: "The guns for the French
    carrack must lie here next month. Will, when does your
    young fool" (me, so please you!) "come back from
    Lunnon?"

    "'No odds," I heard Ticehurst Will answer. "Lay 'em
    just where you've a mind, Mus' Collins. We're all too
    afraid o' the Devil to mell with the tower now." And the
    long knave laughed.

    "'Ah! 'tis easy enow for you to raise the Devil, Will,"
    says another - Ralph Hobden of the Forge.

    "'Aaa-men!" roars Sebastian, and ere I could hold him,
    he leaps down the stairs - won'erful devilish-like
    howling no bounds. He had scarce time to lay out for the
    nearest than they ran. Saints, how they ran! We heard
    them pound on the door of the Bell Tavern, and then we
    ran too.

    "'What's next?" says Sebastian, looping up his cow-
    tail as he leaped the briars. "I've broke honest John's face."

    "'Ride to Sir John Pelham's," I said. "He is the only
    one that ever stood by me."

    'We rode to Brightling, and past Sir John's lodges,
    where the keepers would have shot at us for deer-
    stealers, and we had Sir John down into his Justice's
    chair, and when we had told him our tale and showed
    him the cow-hide which Sebastian wore still girt about
    him, he laughed till the tears ran.

    "'Wel-a-well!" he says. "I'll see justice done before
    daylight. What's your complaint? Master Collins is my
    old friend."

    "'He's none of mine," I cried. "When I think how he
    and his likes have baulked and dozened and cozened me
    at every turn over the church" - and I choked at the thought.

    "'Ah, but ye see now they needed it for another use,"
    says he smoothly.

    also they did my serpentines," Sebastian cries. "I
    should be half across the Western Ocean by now if my
    guns had been ready. But they're sold to a Scotch pirate
    by your old friend -"

    "'Where's your proof?" says Sir John, stroking his beard.

    "'I broke my shins over them not an hour since, and I
    heard John give order where they were to be taken," says Sebastian.

    "'Words! Words only," says Sir John. "Master Collins
    is somewhat of a liar at best."

    'He carried it so gravely that, for the moment, I thought
    he was dipped in this secret traffick too, and that there
    was not an honest ironmaster in Sussex.

    "'Name o' Reason!" says Sebastian, and raps with his
    cow-tail on the table, "whose guns are they, then?"

    "'Yours, manifestly," says Sir John. "You come with
    the King's Order for 'em, and Master Collins casts them
    in his foundry. If he chooses to bring them up from
    Nether Forge and lay 'em out in the church-tower, why,
    they are e'en so much the nearer to the main road and
    you are saved a day's hauling. What a coil to make of a
    mere act of neighbourly kindness, lad!"

    "'I fear I have requited him very scurvily," says
    Sebastian, looking at his knuckles. "But what of the
    demi-cannon? I could do with 'em well, but they are not in
    the King's Order."

    "'Kindness - loving-kindness," says Sir John. "Questionless,
    in his zeal for the King and his love for you, John
    adds those two cannon as a gift. 'Tis plain as this coming
    daylight, ye stockfish!"

    "'So it is," says Sebastian. "Oh, Sir John, Sir John, why
    did you never use the sea? You are lost ashore." And he
    looked on him with great love.

    "'I do my best in my station." Sir John strokes his
    beard again and rolls forth his deep drumming Justice's
    voice thus: "But - suffer me! - you two lads, on some
    midnight frolic into which I probe not, roystering around
    the taverns, surprise Master Collins at his" - he thinks a
    moment - "at his good deeds done by stealth. Ye surprise
    him, I say, cruelly."

    "'Truth, Sir John. If you had seen him run!" says Sebastian.

    "'On this you ride breakneck to me with a tale of
    pirates, and wool-wains, and cow-hides, which, though
    it hath moved my mirth as a man, offendeth my reason as
    a magistrate. So I will e'en accompany you back to the
    tower with, perhaps, some few of my own people, and
    three-four wagons, and I'll be your warrant that Master
    John Collins will freely give you your guns and your
    demi-cannon, Master Sebastian." He breaks into his
    proper voice - "I warned the old tod and his neighbours
    long ago that they'd come to trouble with their side-
    sellings and bye-dealings; but we cannot have half
    Sussex hanged for a little gun-running. Are ye content, lads?"

    "'I'd commit any treason for two demi-cannon, said
    Sebastian, and rubs his hands.

    ,"Ye have just compounded with rank treason-felony
    for the same bribe," says Sir John. "Wherefore to horse,
    and get the guns."'

    'But Master Collins meant the guns for Sir Andrew
    Barton all along, didn't he?' said Dan.

    'Questionless, that he did,' said Hal. 'But he lost them.
    We poured into the village on the red edge of dawn, Sir
    John horsed, in half-armour, his pennon flying; behind
    him thirty stout Brightling knaves, five abreast; behind
    them four wool-wains, and behind them four trumpets
    to triumph over the jest, blowing: Our King went forth to
    Normandie. When we halted and rolled the ringing guns
    out of the tower, 'twas for all the world like Friar Roger's
    picture of the French siege in the Queen's Missal-book.'

    'And what did we - I mean, what did our village do?' said Dan.

    'Oh! Bore it nobly - nobly,' cried Hal. 'Though they
    had tricked me, I was proud of them. They came out of
    their housen, looked at that little army as though it had
    been a post, and went their shut-mouthed way. Never a
    sign! Never a word! They'd ha' perished sooner than let
    Brightling overcrow us. Even that villain, Ticehurst Will,
    coming out of the Bell for his morning ale, he all but runs
    under Sir John's horse.

    "''Ware, Sirrah Devil!" cries Sir John, reining back.

    "'Oh!" says Will. "Market-day, is it? And all the
    bullocks from Brightling here?"

    'I spared him his belting for that - the brazen knave!

    'But John Collins was our masterpiece! He happened
    along-street (his jaw tied up where Sebastian had clouted
    him) when we were trundling the first demi-cannon
    through the lych-gate.

    "'I reckon you'll find her middlin' heavy," he says. "If
    you've a mind to pay, I'll loan ye my timber-tug. She
    won't lie easy on ary wool-wain."

    'That was the one time I ever saw Sebastian taken flat
    aback. He opened and shut his mouth, fishy-like.

    "'No offence," says Master John. "You've got her
    reasonable good cheap. I thought ye might not grudge
    me a groat if I helped move her." Ah, he was a masterpiece!
    They say that morning's work cost our John two
    hundred pounds, and he never winked an eyelid, not
    even when he saw the guns all carted off to Lewes.'

    'Neither then nor later?' said Puck.

    'Once. 'Twas after he gave St Barnabas' the new chime
    of bells. (Oh, there was nothing the Collinses, or the
    Hayes, or the Fowles, or the Fenners would not do for the
    church then! "Ask and have" was their song.) We had
    rung 'em in, and he was in the tower with Black Nick
    Fowle, that gave us our rood-screen. The old man
    pinches the bell-rope one hand and scratches his neck
    with t'other. "Sooner she was pulling yon clapper than
    my neck, he says. That was all! That was Sussex
    seely Sussex for everlasting'

    'And what happened after?' said Una.

    'I went back into England,' said Hal, slowly. 'I'd
    had my lesson against pride. But they tell me I left St
    Barnabas' a jewel - justabout a jewel! Wel-a-well! 'Twas
    done for and among my own people, and - Father Roger
    was right - I never knew such trouble or such triumph
    since. That's the nature o' things. A dear - dear land.' He
    dropped his chin on his chest.

    'There's your Father at the Forge. What's he talking to
    old Hobden about?' said Puck, opening his hand with
    three leaves in it.

    Dan looked towards the cottage.

    'Oh, I know. It's that old oak lying across the brook.
    Pater always wants it grubbed.'

    In the still valley they could hear old Hobden's deep tones.

    'Have it as you've a mind to,' he was saying. 'But the
    vivers of her roots they hold the bank together. If you
    grub her out, the bank she'll all come tearin' down, an'
    next floods the brook'll swarve up . But have it as you've a
    mind. The Mistuss she sets a heap by the ferns on her trunk.

    'Oh! I'll think it over,' said the Pater.

    Una laughed a little bubbling chuckle.

    'What Devil's in that belfry?' said Hal, with a lazy
    laugh. 'That should be a Hobden by his voice.'

    'Why, the oak is the regular bridge for all the rabbits
    between the Three Acre and our meadow. The best place
    for wires on the farm, Hobden says. He's got two
    there now,' Una answered. 'He won't ever let it be grubbed!'

    'Ah, Sussex! Seely Sussex for everlastin',' murmured
    Hal; and the next moment their Father's voice calling
    across to Little Lindens broke the spell as little
    St Barnabas' clock struck five.



    A Smugglers' Song




    If You wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet,
    Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,
    Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie.
    Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

         Five-and-twenty ponies,
         Trotting through the dark -
         Brandy for the Parson,
         'Baccy for the Clerk;
         Laces for a lady; letters for a spy,
         And watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

    Running round the woodlump if you chance to find
    Little barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy-wine;
    Don't you shout to come and look, nor take 'em for your play;
    Put the brushwood back again, - and they'll be gone next day!
    If you see the stable-door setting open wide;
    If you see a tired horse lying down inside;
    If your mother mends a coat cut about and tore;
    If the lining's wet and warm - don't you ask no more!

    If you meet King George's men, dressed in blue and red,
    You be careful what you say, and mindful what is said.
    If they call you 'pretty maid,' and chuck you 'neath the chin,
    Don't you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one's been!

    Knocks and footsteps round the house - whistles after dark -
    You've no call for running out till the house-dogs bark.
    Trusty's here, and Pincher's here, and see how dumb they lie -
    They don't fret to follow when the Gentlemen go by!

    If you do as you've been told, likely there's a chance
    You'll be give a dainty doll, all the way from France,
    With a cap of Valenciennes, and a velvet hood -
    A present from the Gentlemen, along o' being good!

         Five-and-twenty ponies,
         Trotting through the dark -
         Brandy for the Parson,
         'Baccy for the Clerk.
         Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie -
         Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!




    'DYMCHURCH FLIT'





    The Bee Boy's Song




    Bees! Bees! Hark to your bees!
    'Hide from your neighbours as much as you please,
    But all that has happened, to us you must tell,
    Or else we will give you no honey to sell!'

    A Maiden in her glory,
    Upon her wedding-day,
    Must tell her Bees the story,
    Or else they'll fly away.
    Fly away - die away -
    Dwindle down and leave you!
    But if you don't deceive your Bees,
    Your Bees will not deceive you.

    Marriage, birth or buryin',
    News across the seas,
    All you're sad or merry in,
    You must tell the Bees.
    Tell 'em coming in an' out,
    Where the Fanners fan,
    'Cause the Bees are justabout
    As curious as a man!

    Don't you wait where trees are,
    When the lightnings play;
    Nor don't you hate where Bees are,
    Or else they'll pine away.
    Pine away - dwine away -
    Anything to leave you!
    But if you never grieve your Bees,
    Your Bees'll never grieve you!



    just at dusk, a soft September rain began to fall on the
    hop-pickers. The mothers wheeled the bouncing perambulators
    out of the gardens; bins were put away, and
    tally-books made up. The young couples strolled home,
    two to each umbrella, and the single men walked behind
    them laughing. Dan and Una, who had been picking
    after their lessons, marched off to roast potatoes at the
    oast-house, where old Hobden, with Blue-eyed Bess, his
    lurcher dog, lived all the month through, drying the hops.

    They settled themselves, as usual, on the sack-strewn
    cot in front of the fires, and, when Hobden drew up the
    shutter, stared, as usual, at the flameless bed of coals
    spouting its heat up the dark well of the old-fashioned
    roundel. Slowly he cracked off a few fresh pieces of coal,
    packed them, with fingers that never flinched, exactly
    where they would do most good; slowly he reached
    behind him till Dan tilted the potatoes into his iron scoop
    of a hand; carefully he arranged them round the fire, and
    then stood for a moment, black against the glare. As he
    closed the shutter, the oast-house seemed dark before
    the day's end, and he lit the candle in the lanthorn. The
    children liked all these things because they knew them so well.

    The Bee Boy, Hobden's son, who is not quite right in
    his head, though he can do anything with bees, slipped
    in like a shadow. They only guessed it when Bess's
    stump-tail wagged against them.

    A big voice began singing outside in the drizzle:

         'Old Mother Laidinwool had nigh twelve months been dead,
         She heard the hops were doin' well, and then popped up her head.'

    'There can't be two people made to holler like that!'
    cried old Hobden, wheeling round.

         'For, says she, "The boys I've picked with when I was young and fair,
         They're bound to be at hoppin', and I'm -'

    A man showed at the doorway.

    'Well, well! They do say hoppin' 'll draw the very
    deadest, and now I belieft 'em. You, Tom? Tom Shoesmith?'
    Hobden lowered his lanthorn.

    'You're a hem of a time makin' your mind to it, Ralph!'
    The stranger strode in - three full inches taller than
    Hobden, a grey-whiskered, brown-faced giant with clear
    blue eyes. They shook hands, and the children could
    hear the hard palms rasp together.

    'You ain't lost none o' your grip,' said Hobden. 'Was it
    thirty or forty year back you broke my head at Peasmarsh Fair?'

    'Only thirty, an' no odds 'tween us regardin' heads,
    neither. You had it back at me with a hop-pole. How did
    we get home that night? Swimmin'?'

    'Same way the pheasant come into Gubbs's pocket - by
    a little luck an' a deal o' conjurin'.' Old Hobden laughed
    in his deep chest.

    see you've not forgot your way about the woods.
    D'ye do any o' this still?' The stranger pretended to look
    along a gun.

    Hobden answered with a quick movement of the hand
    as though he were pegging down a rabbit-wire.

    'No. That's all that's left me now. Age she must as
    Age she can. An' what's your news since all these years?'

         'Oh, I've bin to Plymouth, I've bin to Dover -
         I've bin ramblin', boys, the wide world over,'

    the man answered cheerily. 'I reckon I know as much of
    Old England as most.' He turned towards the children
    and winked boldly.

    'I lay they told you a sight o' lies, then. I've been into
    England fur as Wiltsheer once. I was cheated proper over
    a pair of hedgin'-gloves,' said Hobden.

    'There's fancy-talkin' everywhere. You've cleaved to
    your own parts pretty middlin' close, Ralph.'

    'Can't shift an old tree 'thout it dyin',' Hobden
    chuckled. 'An' I be no more anxious to die than you look
    to be to help me with my hops tonight.'

    The great man leaned against the brickwork of the
    roundel, and swung his arms abroad. 'Hire me!' was all
    he said, and they stumped upstairs laughing.

    The children heard their shovels rasp on the cloth
    where the yellow hops lie drying above the fires, and all
    the oast-house filled with the sweet, sleepy smell as they
    were turned.

    'Who is it?' Una whispered to the Bee Boy.

    'Dunno, no more'n you - if you dunno,' said he, and smiled.

    The voices on the drying-floor talked and chuckled
    together, and the heavy footsteps moved back and forth.
    Presently a hop-pocket dropped through the press-hole
    overhead, and stiffened and fattened as they shovelled it
    full. 'Clank!' went the press, and rammed the loose stuff
    into tight cake.
    'Gentle!' they heard Hobden cry. 'You'll bust her crop
    if you lay on so. You be as careless as Gleason's bull,
    Tom. Come an' sit by the fires. She'll do now.'

    They came down, and as Hobden opened the shutter
    to see if the potatoes were done Tom Shoesmith said to
    the children, 'Put a plenty salt on 'em. That'll show you
    the sort o' man I be.'Again he winked, and again the Bee
    Boy laughed and Una stared at Dan.

    'I know what sort o' man you be,'old Hobden grunted,
    groping for the potatoes round the fire.

    'Do ye?' Tom went on behind his back. 'Some of us
    can't abide Horseshoes, or Church Bells, or Running
    Water; an', talkin' o' runnin' water' - he turned to
    Hobden, who was backing out of the roundel - 'd'you
    mind the great floods at Robertsbridge, when the miller's
    man was drowned in the street?'

    'Middlin' well.' Old Hobden let himself down on the
    coals by the fire-door. 'I was courtin' my woman on the
    Marsh that year. Carter to Mus' Plum I was, gettin' ten
    shillin's week. Mine was a Marsh woman.'

    'Won'erful odd-gates place - Romney Marsh,' said
    Tom Shoesmith. 'I've heard say the world's divided
    like into Europe, Ashy, Afriky, Ameriky, Australy, an'
    Romney Marsh.'

    'The Marsh folk think so,' said Hobden. 'I had a hem o'
    trouble to get my woman to leave it.'

    'Where did she come out of? I've forgot, Ralph.'

    'Dymchurch under the Wall,' Hobden answered, a
    potato in his hand.

    'Then she'd be a Pett - or a Whitgift, would she?'

    'Whitgift.' Hobden broke open the potato and ate it
    with the curious neatness of men who make most of
    their meals in the blowy open. 'She growed to be quite
    reasonable-like after livin' in the Weald awhile, but our
    first twenty year or two she was odd-fashioned, no
    bounds. And she was a won'erful hand with bees.' He
    cut away a little piece of potato and threw it out to the door.

    'Ah! I've heard say the Whitgifts could see further
    through a millstone than most,' said Shoesmith. 'Did
    she, now?'

    'She was honest-innocent of any nigromancin',' said
    Hobden. 'Only she'd read signs and sinnifications out o'
    birds flyin', stars fallin', bees hivin', and such. An, she'd
    lie awake - listenin' for calls, she said.'

    'That don't prove naught,' said Tom. 'All Marsh folk
    has been smugglers since time everlastin'. 'Twould be in
    her blood to listen out o' nights.'

    'Nature-ally,' old Hobden replied, smiling. 'I mind
    when there was smugglin' a sight nearer us than what
    the Marsh be. But that wasn't my woman's trouble.
    'Twas a passel o' no-sense talk' - he dropped his voice -
    'about Pharisees.'

    'Yes. I've heard Marsh men belieft in 'em.'Tom looked
    straight at the wide-eyed children beside Bess.

    'Pharisees,' cried Una. 'Fairies? Oh, I see!'

    'People o' the Hills,' said the Bee Boy, throwing half of
    his potato towards the door.

    'There you be!' said Hobden, pointing at him. My boy
    - he has her eyes and her out-gate sense. That's what she
    called 'em!'

    'And what did you think of it all?'

    'Um - um,' Hobden rumbled. 'A man that uses fields
    an' shaws after dark as much as I've done, he don't go out
    of his road excep' for keepers.'

    'But settin' that aside?' said Tom, coaxingly. 'I saw ye
    throw the Good Piece out-at-doors just now. Do ye
    believe or - do ye?'

    'There was a great black eye to that tater,' said
    Hobden indignantly.

    'My liddle eye didn't see un, then. It looked as if you
    meant it for - for Any One that might need it. But settin'
    that aside, d'ye believe or - do ye?'

    'I ain't sayin' nothin', because I've heard naught, an'
    I've see naught. But if you was to say there was more
    things after dark in the shaws than men, or fur, or
    feather, or fin, I dunno as I'd go far about to call you a liar.
    Now turn again, Tom. What's your say?'

    'I'm like you. I say nothin'. But I'll tell you a tale, an'
    you can fit it as how you please.'

    'Passel o' no-sense stuff,' growled Hobden, but he
    filled his pipe.

    'The Marsh men they call it Dymchurch Flit,'Tom went
    on slowly. 'Hap you have heard it?'

    'My woman she've told it me scores o' times. Dunno as
    I didn't end by belieftin' it - sometimes.

    Hobden crossed over as he spoke, and sucked with his
    pipe at the yellow lanthorn flame. Tom rested one great
    elbow on one great knee, where he sat among the coal.

    'Have you ever bin in the Marsh?' he said to Dan.

    'Only as far as Rye, once,' Dan answered.

    'Ah, that's but the edge. Back behind of her there's
    steeples settin' beside churches, an' wise women settin'
    beside their doors, an' the sea settin' above the land, an'
    ducks herdin' wild in the diks' (he meant ditches). 'The
    Marsh is justabout riddled with diks an' sluices, an'
    tide-gates an' water-lets. You can hear 'em bubblin' an'
    grummelin' when the tide works in 'em, an' then you
    hear the sea rangin' left and right-handed all up along the
    Wall. You've seen how flat she is - the Marsh? You'd
    think nothin' easier than to walk eend-on acrost her? Ah,
    but the diks an' the water-lets, they twists the roads
    about as ravelly as witch-yarn on the spindles. So ye get
    all turned round in broad daylight.'

    'That's because they've dreened the waters into the
    diks,' said Hobden. 'When I courted my woman the
    rushes was green - Eh me! the rushes was green - an' the
    Bailiff o' the Marshes he rode up and down as free as the fog.'

    'Who was he?' said Dan.

    'Why, the Marsh fever an' ague. He've clapped me on
    the shoulder once or twice till I shook proper. But now
    the dreenin' off of the waters have done away with the
    fevers; so they make a joke, like, that the Bailiff o' the
    Marshes broke his neck in a dik. A won'erful place for
    bees an' ducks 'tis too.'

    'An' old,' Tom went on. 'Flesh an' Blood have been
    there since Time Everlastin' Beyond. Well, now, speakin'
    among themselves, the Marsh men say that from Time
    Everlastin' Beyond, the Pharisees favoured the Marsh
    above the rest of Old England. I lay the Marsh men ought
    to know. They've been out after dark, father an' son,
    smugglin' some one thing or t'other, since ever wool
    grew to sheep's backs. They say there was always a
    middlin' few Pharisees to be seen on the Marsh.
    Impident as rabbits, they was. They'd dance on the
    nakid roads in the nakid daytime; they'd flash their liddle
    green lights along the diks, comin' an' goin', like honest
    smugglers. Yes, an' times they'd lock the church doors
    against parson an' clerk of Sundays.'

    'That 'ud be smugglers layin' in the lace or the brandy
    till they could run it out o' the Marsh. I've told my woman
    so,' said Hobden.

    'I'll lay she didn't belieft it, then - not if she was a
    Whitgift. A won'erful choice place for Pharisees, the
    Marsh, by all accounts, till Queen Bess's father he come
    in with his Reformatories.'

    'Would that be a Act of Parliament like?' Hobden asked.

    'Sure-ly. Can't do nothing in Old England without Act,
    Warrant an' Summons. He got his Act allowed him,
    an', they say, Queen Bess's father he used the parish
    churches something shameful. justabout tore the gizzards
    out of I dunnamany. Some folk in England they
    held with 'en; but some they saw it different, an' it
    eended in 'em takin' sides an' burnin' each other no
    bounds, accordin' which side was top, time bein'. That
    tarrified the Pharisees: for Goodwill among Flesh an'
    Blood is meat an' drink to 'em, an' ill-will is poison.'

    'Same as bees,' said the Bee Boy. 'Bees won't stay by a
    house where there's hating.'

    'True,' said Tom. 'This Reformatories tarrified the
    Pharisees same as the reaper goin' round a last stand o'
    wheat tarrifies rabbits. They packed into the Marsh from
    all parts, and they says, "Fair or foul, we must flit out o'
    this, for Merry England's done with, an' we're reckoned
    among the Images."'

    'Did they all see it that way?' said Hobden.

    'All but one that was called Robin - if you've heard of
    him. What are you laughin' at?'Tom turned to Dan. 'The
    Pharisees's trouble didn't tech Robin, because he'd
    cleaved middlin' close to people, like. No more he never
    meant to go out of Old England - not he; so he was sent
    messagin' for help among Flesh an' Blood. But Flesh an'
    Blood must always think of their own concerns, an'
    Robin couldn't get through at 'em, ye see . They thought it
    was tide-echoes off the Marsh.'

    'What did you - what did the fai - Pharisees want?'
    Una asked.

    'A boat, to be sure. Their liddle wings could no more
    cross Channel than so many tired butterflies. A boat an' a
    crew they desired to sail 'em over to France, where yet
    awhile folks hadn't tore down the Images. They couldn't
    abide cruel Canterbury Bells ringin' to Bulverhithe for
    more pore men an' women to be burnded, nor the King's
    proud messenger ridin' through the land givin' orders to
    tear down the Images. They couldn't abide it no shape.
    Nor yet they couldn't get their boat an' crew to flit by
    without Leave an' Good-will from Flesh an' Blood; an'
    Flesh an' Blood came an' went about its own business the
    while the Marsh was swarvin' up, an' swarvin' up with
    Pharisees from all England over, strivin' all means to get
    through at Flesh an' Blood to tell 'em their sore need ... I
    don't know as you've ever heard say Pharisees are like chickens?'

    'My woman used to say that too,'said Hobden, folding
    his brown arms.

    'They be. You run too many chickens together, an' the
    ground sickens, like, an' you get a squat, an' your chickens
    die. Same way, you crowd Pharisees all in one place -
    they don't die, but Flesh an' Blood walkin' among 'em is
    apt to sick up an' pine off. They don't mean it, an' Flesh
    an' Blood don't know it, but that's the truth - as I've
    heard. The Pharisees through bein' all stenched up an'
    frighted, an' trying' to come through with their
    supplications, they nature-ally changed the thin airs an'
    humours in Flesh an' Blood. It lay on the Marsh like
    thunder. Men saw their churches ablaze with the wildfire
    in the windows after dark; they saw their cattle scatterin'
    an' no man scarin'; their sheep flockin' an' no man
    drivin'; their horses latherin' an' no man leadin'; they
    saw the liddle low green lights more than ever in the
    dik-sides; they heard the liddle feet patterin' more than
    ever round the houses; an' night an' day, day an' night,
    'twas all as though they were bein' creeped up on, an'
    hinted at by Some One or other that couldn't rightly
    shape their trouble. Oh, I lay they sweated! Man an'
    maid, woman an' child, their nature done 'em no service
    all the weeks while the Marsh was swarvin' up with
    Pharisees. But they was Flesh an' Blood, an' Marsh men
    before all. They reckoned the signs sinnified trouble for
    the Marsh. Or that the sea 'ud rear up against Dymchurch
    Wall an' they'd be drownded like Old Winchelsea;
    or that the Plague was comin'. So they looked for
    the meanin' in the sea or in the clouds - far an' high up.
    They never thought to look near an' knee-high, where
    they could see naught.

    'Now there was a poor widow at Dymchurch under the
    Wall, which, lacking man or property, she had the more
    time for feeling; and she come to feel there was a Trouble
    outside her doorstep bigger an' heavier than aught she'd
    ever carried over it. She had two sons - one born blind,
    an' t'other struck dumb through fallin' off the Wall when
    he was liddle. They was men grown, but not wage-
    earnin', an' she worked for 'em, keepin' bees and
    answerin' Questions.'

    'What sort of questions?' said Dan.

    'Like where lost things might be found, an' what to put
    about a crooked baby's neck, an' how to join parted
    sweethearts. She felt the Trouble on the Marsh same as
    eels feel thunder. She was a wise woman.'

    'My woman was won'erful weather-tender, too,' said
    Hobden. 'I've seen her brish sparks like off an anvil out of
    her hair in thunderstorms. But she never laid out to
    answer Questions.'

    'This woman was a Seeker, like, an' Seekers they
    sometimes find. One night, while she lay abed, hot an'
    achin', there come a Dream an' tapped at her window,
    an' "Widow Whitgift," it said, "Widow Whitgift!"

    'First, by the wings an' the whistlin', she thought it was
    peewits, but last she arose an' dressed herself, an'
    opened her door to the Marsh, an' she felt the Trouble an'
    the Groanin' all about her, strong as fever an' ague, an'
    she calls: "What is it? Oh, what is it?"

    'Then 'twas all like the frogs in the diks peepin'; then
    'twas all like the reeds in the diks clip-clappin'; an' then
    the great Tide-wave rummelled along the Wall, an' she
    couldn't hear proper.

    'Three times she called, an' three times the Tide-wave
    did her down. But she catched the quiet between, an' she
    cries out, "What is the Trouble on the Marsh that's been
    lying down with my heart an' arising with my body this
    month gone?" She felt a liddle hand lay hold on her
    gown-hem, an' she stooped to the pull o' that liddle hand.'

    Tom Shoesmith spread his huge fist before the fire and
    smiled at it as he went on.

    "'Will the sea drown the Marsh?" she says. She was a
    Marsh woman first an' foremost.

    "'No," says the liddle voice. "Sleep sound for all o' that."

    "'Is the Plague comin' to the Marsh?" she says. Them
    was all the ills she knowed.

    "'No. Sleep sound for all o' that," says Robin.

    'She turned about, half mindful to go in, but the liddle
    voices grieved that shrill an' sorrowful she turns back, an'
    she cries: "If it is not a Trouble of Flesh an' Blood, what
    can I do?"
    'The Pharisees cried out upon her from all round to
    fetch them a boat to sail to France, an' come back no more.

    "'There's a boat on the Wall," she says, "but I can't
    push it down to the sea, nor sail it when 'tis there."

    "'Lend us your sons," says all the Pharisees. "Give
    'em Leave an' Good-will to sail it for us, Mother - O Mother!"

    "'One's dumb, an' t'other's blind," she says. "But all
    the dearer me for that; and you'll lose them in the big sea. "
    The voices justabout pierced through her; an' there was
    children's voices too. She stood out all she could, but she
    couldn't rightly stand against that. So she says: "If you
    can draw my sons for your job, I'D not hinder 'em. You
    can't ask no more of a Mother."

    'She saw them liddle green lights dance an' cross till
    she was dizzy; she heard them liddle feet patterin' by the
    thousand; she heard cruel Canterbury Bells ringing to
    Bulverhithe, an' she heard the great Tide-wave ranging
    along the Wall. That was while the Pharisees was workin'
    a Dream to wake her two sons asleep: an' while she bit on
    her fingers she saw them two she'd bore come out an'
    pass her with never a word. She followed 'em, cryin'
    pitiful, to the old boat on the Wall, an' that they took an'
    runned down to the sea.

    'When they'd stepped mast an' sail the blind son
    speaks: "Mother, we're waitin' your Leave an' Good-will
    to take Them over."'

    Tom Shoesmith threw back his head and half shut his eyes.

    'Eh, me!' he said. 'She was a fine, valiant woman, the
    Widow Whitgift. She stood twistin' the eends of her long
    hair over her fingers, an' she shook like a poplar, makin'
    up her mind. The Pharisees all about they hushed their
    children from cryin' an' they waited dumb-still. She was
    all their dependence. 'Thout her Leave an' Good-will
    they could not pass; for she was the Mother. So she shook
    like a aps-tree makin' up her mind. 'Last she drives the
    word past her teeth, an' "Go!" she says. "Go with my
    Leave an' Goodwill."

    'Then I saw - then, they say, she had to brace back
    same as if she was wadin' in tide-water; for the Pharisees
    just about flowed past her - down the beach to the boat, I
    dunnamany of 'em - with their wives an' childern an'
    valooables, all escapin' out of cruel Old England. Silver
    you could hear chinkin', an' liddle bundles hove down
    dunt on the bottom-boards, an' passels o' liddle swords
    an' shields raklin', an' liddle fingers an' toes scratchin' on
    the boatside to board her when the two sons pushed her
    off. That boat she sunk lower an' lower, but all the
    Widow could see in it was her boys movin' hampered-
    like to get at the tackle. Up sail they did, an' away they
    went, deep as a Rye barge, away into the off-shore
    mists, an' the Widow Whitgift she sat down an' eased
    her grief till mornin' light.'

    'I never heard she was all alone,' said Hobden.

    'I remember now. The one called Robin, he stayed with
    her, they tell. She was all too grieevious to listen to his promises.'

    'Ah! She should ha' made her bargain beforehand. I
    allus told my woman so!'Hobden cried.

    'No. She loaned her sons for a pure love-loan, bein' as
    she sensed the Trouble on the Marshes, an' was simple
    good-willin' to ease it.' Tom laughed softly. 'She done
    that. Yes, she done that! From Hithe to Bulverhithe,
    fretty man an' maid, ailin' woman an' wailin' child, they
    took the advantage of the change in the thin airs just
    about as soon as the Pharisees flitted. Folks come out
    fresh an' shinin' all over the Marsh like snails after
    wet. An' that while the Widow Whitgift sat grievin'
    on the Wall. She might have belieft us - she might
    have trusted her sons would be sent back! She
    fussed, no bounds, when their boat come in after three days.'

    'And, of course, the sons were both quite cured?' said Una.

    'No-o. That would have been out o' nature. She got 'em
    back as she sent 'em. The blind man he hadn't seen
    naught of anythin', an' the dumb man nature-ally he
    couldn't say aught of what he'd seen. I reckon that was
    why the Pharisees pitched on 'em for the ferryin' job.'
    'But what did you - what did Robin promise the
    Widow?' said Dan.

    'What did he promise, now?' Tom pretended to think.
    'Wasn't your woman a Whitgift, Ralph? Didn't she ever say?'

    'She told me a passel o' no-sense stuff when he was
    born.' Hobden pointed at his son. 'There was always to
    be one of 'em that could see further into a millstone than most.'

    'Me! That's me!'said the Bee Boy so suddenly that they
    all laughed.

    'I've got it now!' cried Tom, slapping his knee. 'So long
    as Whitgift blood lasted, Robin promised there would
    allers be one o' her stock that - that no Trouble 'ud lie on,
    no Maid 'ud sigh on, no Night could frighten, no Fright
    could harm, no Harm could make sin, an' no Woman
    could make a fool of.'

    'Well, ain't that just me?' said the Bee Boy, where he sat
    in the silver square of the great September moon that was
    staring into the oast-house door.

    'They was the exact words she told me when we first
    found he wasn't like others. But it beats me how you
    known 'em,' said Hobden.

    'Aha! There's more under my hat besides hair?' Tom
    laughed and stretched himself. 'When I've seen these
    two young folk home, we'll make a night of old days,
    Ralph, with passin' old tales - eh? An' where might
    you live?' he said, gravely, to Dan. 'An' do you think
    your Pa 'ud give me a drink for takin' you there, Missy?'

    They giggled so at this that they had to run out. Tom
    picked them both up, set one on each broad shoulder,
    and tramped across the ferny pasture where the cows
    puffed milky puffs at them in the moonlight.

    'Oh, Puck! Puck! I guessed you right from when you
    talked about the salt. How could you ever do it?' Una
    cried, swinging along delighted.

    'Do what?'he said, and climbed the stile by the pollard oak.

    'Pretend to be Tom Shoesmith,' said Dan, and they
    ducked to avoid the two little ashes that grow by the
    bridge over the brook. Tom was almost running.

    'Yes. That's my name, Mus' Dan,' he said, hurrying
    over the silent shining lawn, where a rabbit sat by the big
    white-thorn near the croquet ground. 'Here you be.' He
    strode into the old kitchen yard, and slid them down as
    Ellen came to ask questions.

    'I'm helping in Mus' Spray's oast-house,' he said to
    her. 'No, I'm no foreigner. I knowed this country 'fore
    your mother was born; an' - yes, it's dry work oastin',
    Miss. Thank you.'

    Ellen went to get a jug, and the children went in -
    magicked once more by Oak, Ash, and Thorn!



    A Three-Part Song




    I'm just in love with all these three,
    The Weald an' the Marsh an' the Down countrie;
    Nor I don't know which I love the most,
    The Weald or the Marsh or the white chalk coast!

    I've buried my heart in a ferny hill,
    Twix' a liddle low shaw an' a great high gill.
    Oh, hop-bine yaller an' wood-smoke blue,
    I reckon you'll keep her middling true!

    I've loosed my mind for to out an' run
    On a Marsh that was old when Kings begun:
    Oh, Romney level an' Brenzett reeds,
    I reckon you know what my mind needs!

    I've given my soul to the Southdown grass,
    An' sheep-bells tinkled where you pass.
    Oh, Firle an' Ditchling an' sails at sea,
    I reckon you keep my soul for me!




    THE TREASURE AND THE LAW





    Song of the Fifth River




    When first by Eden Tree
    The Four Great Rivers ran,
    To each was appointed a Man
    Her Prince and Ruler to be.

    But after this was ordained,
    (The ancient legends tell),
    There came dark Israel,
    For whom no River remained.
    Then He That is Wholly Just
    Said to him: 'Fling on the ground
    A handful of yellow dust,
    And a Fifth Great River shall run,
    Mightier than these four,
    In secret the Earth around;
    And Her secret evermore
    Shall be shown to thee and thy Race.

    So it was said and done.
    And, deep in the veins of Earth,
    And, fed by a thousand springs
    That comfort the market-place,
    Or sap the power of Kings,
    The Fifth Great River had birth,
    Even as it was foretold -
    The Secret River of Gold!
    And Israel laid down
    His sceptre and his crown,
    To brood on that River bank,
    Where the waters flashed and sank,
    And burrowed in earth and fell,
    And bided a season below;
    For reason that none might know,
    Save only Israel.

    He is Lord of the Last -
    The Fifth, most wonderful, Flood.
    He hears Her thunder past
    And Her song is in his blood.

    He can foresay: 'She will fall,'
    For he knows which fountain dries
    Behind which desert-belt
    A thousand leagues to the South.

    He can foresay: 'She will rise.'
    He knows what far snows melt
    Along what mountain-wall
    A thousand leagues to the North.

    He snuffs the coming drouth
    As he snuffs the coming rain,
    He knows what each will bring forth,
    And turns it to his gain.

    A Prince without a Sword,
    A Ruler without a Throne;
    Israel follows his quest.
    In every land a guest,
    Of many lands a lord,
    In no land King is he.

    But the Fifth Great River keeps
    The secret of Her deeps
    For Israel alone,
    As it was ordered to be.



    Now it was the third week in November, and the woods
    rang with the noise of pheasant-shooting. No one hunted
    that steep, cramped country except the village beagles,
    who, as often as not, escaped from their kennels and
    made a day of their own. Dan and Una found a couple of
    them towling round the kitchen-garden after the laundry
    cat. The little brutes were only too pleased to go rabbiting,
    so the children ran them all along the brook pastures
    and into Little Lindens farm-yard, where the old sow
    vanquished them - and up to the quarry-hole, where
    they started a fox. He headed for Far Wood, and there
    they frightened out all the Pheasants, who were sheltering
    from a big beat across the valley. Then the cruel guns
    began again, and they grabbed the beagles lest they
    should stray and get hurt.

    'I wouldn't be a pheasant - in November - for a lot,'
    Dan panted, as he caught Folly by the neck. 'Why did you
    laugh that horrid way?'

    'I didn't,' said Una, sitting on Flora, the fat lady-dog.
    'Oh, look! The silly birds are going back to their own
    woods instead of ours, where they would be safe.'

    'Safe till it pleased you to kill them.' An old man, so tall
    he was almost a giant, stepped from behind the clump of
    hollies by Volaterrae. The children jumped, and the dogs
    dropped like setters. He wore a sweeping gown of dark
    thick stuff, lined and edged with yellowish fur, and he
    bowed a bent-down bow that made them feel both proud
    and ashamed. Then he looked at them steadily, and they
    stared back without doubt or fear.

    'You are not afraid?' he said, running his hands
    through his splendid grey beard. 'Not afraid that those
    men yonder' - he jerked his head towards the incessant
    POP-POP of the guns from the lower woods -'will do you hurt?'

    'We-ell'- Dan liked to be accurate, especially when he
    was shy -'old Hobd - a friend of mine told me that one of
    the beaters got peppered last week - hit in the leg, I
    mean. You see, Mr Meyer will fire at rabbits. But he gave
    Waxy Garnett a quid - sovereign, I mean - and Waxy told
    Hobden he'd have stood both barrels for half the money.'

    'He doesn't understand,'Una cried, watching the pale,
    troubled face. 'Oh, I wish -'

    She had scarcely said it when Puck rustled out of the
    hollies and spoke to the man quickly in foreign words.
    Puck wore a long cloak too - the afternoon was just frosting
    down - and it changed his appearance altogether.

    'Nay, nay!'he said at last. 'You did not understand the
    boy. A freeman was a little hurt, by pure mischance, at
    the hunting.'

    'I know that mischance! What did his lord do? Laugh
    and ride over him?' the old man sneered.

    'It was one of your own people did the hurt, Kadmiel.'
    Puck's eyes twinkled maliciously. 'So he gave the freeman
    a piece of gold, and no more was said.'

    'A Jew drew blood from a Christian and no more was
    said?' Kadmiel cried. 'Never! When did they torture him?'

    'No man may be bound, or fined, or slain till he has
    been judged by his peers,' Puck insisted. 'There is but
    one Law in Old England for Jew or Christian - the Law
    that was signed at Runnymede.'

    'Why, that's Magna Charta!' Dan whispered. It was
    one of the few history dates that he could remember.

    Kadmiel turned on him with a sweep and a whirr of his
    spicy-scented gown.

    'Dost thou know of that, babe?' he cried, and lifted his
    hands in wonder.

    'Yes,' said Dan firmly.

         'Magna Charta was signed by John,
         That Henry the Third put his heel upon.

    And old Hobden says that if it hadn't been for her (he calls
    everything "her", you know), the keepers would have
    him clapped in Lewes jail all the year round.'

    Again Puck translated to Kadmiel in the strange,
    solemn-sounding language, and at last Kadmiel laughed.

    'Out of the mouths of babes do we learn,' said he. 'But
    tell me now, and I will not call you a babe but a Rabbi, why
    did the King sign the roll of the New Law at Runnymede?
    For he was a King.'

    Dan looked sideways at his sister. It was her turn.

    'Because he jolly well had to,' said Una softly. 'The
    Barons made him.'
    'Nay,' Kadmiel answered, shaking his head. 'You
    Christians always forget that gold does more than the
    sword. Our good King signed because he could not
    borrow more money from us bad Jews.' He curved his
    shoulders as he spoke. 'A King without gold is a snake
    with a broken back, and' - his nose sneered up and his
    eyebrows frowned down -'it is a good deed to break a
    snake's back. That was my work,' he cried, triumphantly,
    to Puck. 'Spirit of Earth, bear witness that that was my
    work!' He shot up to his full towering height, and his
    words rang like a trumpet. He had a voice that changed
    its tone almost as an opal changes colour - sometimes
    deep and thundery, sometimes thin and waily, but
    always it made you listen.

    'Many people can bear witness to that,' Puck
    answered. 'Tell these babes how it was done. Remember,
    Master, they do not know Doubt or Fear.'

    'So I saw in their faces when we met,' said Kadmiel.
    'Yet surely, surely they are taught to spit upon Jews?'

    'Are they?' said Dan, much interested. 'Where at?'

    Puck fell back a pace, laughing. 'Kadmiel is thinking of
    King John's reign,' he explained. 'His people were badly
    treated then.'

    'Oh, we know that.' they answered, and (it was very
    rude of them, but they could not help it) they stared
    straight at Kadmiel's mouth to see if his teeth were all
    there. It stuck in their lesson-memory that King John
    used to pull out Jews' teeth to make them lend him money.

    Kadmiel understood the look and smiled bitterly.

    'No. Your King never drew my teeth: I think, perhaps,
    I drew his. Listen! I was not born among Christians, but
    among Moors - in Spain - in a little white town under the
    mountains. Yes, the Moors are cruel, but at least their
    learned men dare to think. It was prophesied of me at my
    birth that I should be a Lawgiver to a People of a strange
    speech and a hard language. We Jews are always looking
    for the Prince and the Lawgiver to come. Why not? My
    people in the town (we were very few) set me apart as a
    child of the prophecy - the Chosen of the Chosen. We
    Jews dream so many dreams. You would never guess it to
    see us slink about the rubbish-heaps in our quarter; but at
    the day's end - doors shut, candles lit - aha! then we
    became the Chosen again.'

    He paced back and forth through the wood as he
    talked. The rattle of the shot-guns never ceased, and the
    dogs whimpered a little and lay flat on the leaves.
    'I was a Prince. Yes! Think of a little Prince who had
    never known rough words in his own house handed over
    to shouting, bearded Rabbis, who pulled his ears and
    filliped his nose, all that he might learn - learn - learn to
    be King when his time came. He! Such a little Prince it
    was! One eye he kept on the stone-throwing Moorish
    boys, and the other it roved about the streets looking for
    his Kingdom. Yes, and he learned to cry softly when he
    was hunted up and down those streets. He learned to do
    all things without noise. He played beneath his father's
    table when the Great Candle was lit, and he listened as
    children listen to the talk of his father's friends above the
    table. They came across the mountains, from out of all the
    world, for my Prince's father was their counsellor. They
    came from behind the armies of Sala-ud-Din: from
    Rome: from Venice: from England. They stole down our
    alley, they tapped secretly at our door, they took off their
    rags, they arrayed themselves, and they talked to my
    father at the wine. All over the world the heathen fought
    each other. They brought news of these wars, and while
    he played beneath the table, my Prince heard these
    meanly dressed ones decide between themselves how, and when, and
    for how long King should draw sword against King, and People
    rise up against People. Why not? There can be no war without
    gold, and we Jews know how the earth's gold moves with the
    seasons, and the crops, and the winds; circling and
    looping and rising and sinking away like a river -
    a wonderful underground river. How should the
    foolish Kings know that while they fight and steal and kill?'

    The children's faces showed that they knew nothing at
    all as, with open eyes, they trotted and turned beside the
    long-striding old man. He twitched his gown over his
    shoulders, and a square plate of gold, studded with
    jewels, gleamed for an instant through the fur, like a star
    through flying snow.

    'No matter,' he said. 'But, credit me, my Prince saw
    peace or war decided not once, but many times, by the
    fall of a coin spun between a Jew from Bury and a Jewess
    from Alexandria, in his father's house, when the Great
    Candle was lit. Such power had we Jews among the
    Gentiles. Ah, my little Prince! Do you wonder that he
    learned quickly? Why not?' He muttered to himself and
    went on:

    'My trade was that of a physician. When I had learned
    it in Spain I went to the East to find my Kingdom. Why
    not? A Jew is as free as a sparrow - or a dog. He goes
    where he is hunted. In the East I found libraries where
    men dared to think - schools of medicine where they
    dared to learn. I was diligent in my business. Therefore I
    stood before Kings. I have been a brother to Princes and a
    companion to beggars, and I have walked between the
    living and the dead. There was no profit in it. I did not
    find my Kingdom. So, in the tenth year of my travels,
    when I had reached the Uttermost Eastern Sea, I returned
    to my father's house. God had wonderfully preserved
    my people. None had been slain, none even wounded,
    and only a few scourged. I became once more a son in my
    father's house. Again the Great Candle was lit; again the
    meanly apparelled ones tapped on our door after dusk;
    and again I heard them weigh out peace and war, as they
    weighed out the gold on the table. But I was not rich - not
    very rich. Therefore, when those that had power and
    knowledge and wealth talked together, I sat in the
    shadow. Why not?

    'Yet all my wanderings had shown me one sure thing,
    which is, that a King without money is like a spear
    without a head. He cannot do much harm. I said, therefore,
    to Elias of Bury, a great one among our people:
    "Why do our people lend any more to the Kings that
    oppress us?" "Because," said Elias, "if we refuse they stir
    up their people against us, and the People are tenfold
    more cruel than Kings. If thou doubtest, come with me to
    Bury in England and live as I live."

    'I saw my mother's face across the candle flame, and I
    said, "I will come with thee to Bury. Maybe my Kingdom
    shall be there."

    'So I sailed with Elias to the darkness and the cruelty of
    Bury in England, where there are no learned men. How
    can a man be wise if he hate? At Bury I kept his accounts
    for Elias, and I saw men kill Jews there by the tower. No -
    none laid hands on Elias. He lent money to the King, and
    the King's favour was about him. A King will not take the
    life so long as there is any gold. This King - yes, John -
    oppressed his people bitterly because they would not
    give him money. Yet his land was a good land. If he had
    only given it rest he might have cropped it as a Christian
    crops his beard. But even that little he did not know, for
    God had deprived him of all understanding, and had
    multiplied pestilence, and famine, and despair upon the
    people. Therefore his people turned against us Jews,
    who are all people's dogs. Why not? Lastly the Barons
    and the people rose together against the King because of
    his cruelties. Nay - nay - the Barons did not love the
    people, but they saw that if the King cut up and destroyed
    the common people, he would presently destroy
    the Barons. They joined then, as cats and pigs will join to
    slay a snake. I kept the accounts, and I watched all these
    things, for I remembered the Prophecy.

    'A great gathering of Barons (to most of whom we had
    lent money) came to Bury, and there, after much talk and
    a thousand runnings-about, they made a roll of the New
    Laws that they would force on the King. If he swore to
    keep those Laws, they would allow him a little money.
    That was the King's God - Money - to waste. They
    showed us the roll of the New Laws. Why not? We had
    lent them money. We knew all their counsels - we Jews
    shivering behind our doors in Bury.' He threw out his
    hands suddenly. 'We did not seek to be paid all in money.
    We sought Power- Power- Power! That is our God in our
    captivity. Power to use!

    'I said to Elias: "These New Laws are good. Lend no
    more money to the King: so long as he has money he will
    lie and slay the people."

    "'Nay," said Elias. "I know this people. They are
    madly cruel. Better one King than a thousand butchers. I
    have lent a little money to the Barons, or they would
    torture us, but my most I will lend to the King. He hath
    promised me a place near him at Court, where my wife
    and I shall be safe."

    "'But if the King be made to keep these New Laws," I
    said, "the land will have peace, and our trade will grow.
    If we lend he will fight again."

    "'Who made thee a Lawgiver in England?" said Elias.
    "I know this people. Let the dogs tear one another! I will
    lend the King ten thousand pieces of gold, and he can
    fight the Barons at his pleasure."

    "'There are not two thousand pieces of gold in all
    England this summer," I said, for I kept the accounts,
    and I knew how the earth's gold moved - that wonderful
    underground river. Elias barred home the windows,
    and, his hands about his mouth, he told me how, when
    he was trading with small wares in a French ship, he had
    come to the Castle of Pevensey.'

    'Oh!' said Dan. 'Pevensey again!' and looked at Una,
    who nodded and skipped.

    'There, after they had scattered his pack up and down
    the Great Hall, some young knights carried him to an
    upper room, and dropped him into a well in a wall, that
    rose and fell with the tide. They called him Joseph, and
    threw torches at his wet head. Why not?'

    'Why, of course!'cried Dan. 'Didn't you know it was -'
    Puck held up his hand to stop him, and Kadmiel, who
    never noticed, went on.

    'When the tide dropped he thought he stood on old
    armour, but feeling with his toes, he raked up bar on bar
    of soft gold. Some wicked treasure of the old days put
    away, and the secret cut off by the sword. I have heard
    the like before.'

    'So have we,' Una whispered. 'But it wasn't wicked a bit.'

    'Elias took a little of the stuff with him, and thrice
    yearly he would return to Pevensey as a chapman, selling
    at no price or profit, till they suffered him to sleep in the
    empty room, where he would plumb and grope, and
    steal away a few bars. The great store of it still remained,
    and by long brooding he had come to look on it as his
    own. Yet when we thought how we should lift and
    convey it, we saw no way. This was before the Word of
    the Lord had come to me. A walled fortress possessed by
    Normans; in the midst a forty-foot tide-well out of
    which to remove secretly many horse-loads of gold!
    Hopeless! So Elias wept. Adah, his wife, wept too. She
    had hoped to stand beside the Queen's Christian
    tiring-maids at Court when the King should give
    them that place at Court which he had promised.
    Why not? She was born in England - an odious woman.

    'The present evil to us was that Elias, out of his strong
    folly, had, as it were, promised the King that he would
    arm him with more gold. Wherefore the King in his camp
    stopped his ears against the Barons and the people.
    Wherefore men died daily. Adah so desired her place at
    Court, she besought Elias to tell the King where the
    treasure lay, that the King might take it by force, and -
    they would trust in his gratitude. Why not? This Elias
    refused to do, for he looked on the gold as his own. They
    quarrelled, and they wept at the evening meal, and late in
    the night came one Langton - a priest, almost learned - to
    borrow more money for the Barons. Elias and Adah went
    to their chamber.'

    Kadmiel laughed scornfully in his beard. The shots
    across the valley stopped as the shooting party changed
    their ground for the last beat.

    'So it was I, not Elias,' he went on quietly, 'that made
    terms with Langton touching the fortieth of the New Laws.'

    'What terms?' said Puck quickly. 'The Fortieth of the
    Great Charter says: "To none will we sell, refuse, or delay
    right or justice."'

    'True, but the Barons had written first: To no free man. It
    cost me two hundred broad pieces of gold to change
    those narrow words. Langton, the priest, understood.
    "Jew though thou art," said he, "the change is just, and if
    ever Christian and Jew came to be equal in England thy
    people may thank thee." Then he went out stealthily, as
    men do who deal with Israel by night. I think he spent my
    gift upon his altar. Why not? I have spoken with Langton.
    He was such a man as I might have been if - if we
    Jews had been a people. But yet, in many things, a child.

    'I heard Elias and Adah abovestairs quarrel, and,
    knowing the woman was the stronger, I saw that Elias
    would tell the King of the gold and that the King would
    continue in his stubbornness. Therefore I saw that the
    gold must be put away from the reach of any man. Of a
    sudden, the Word of the Lord came to me saying,
    "The Morning is come, O thou that dwellest in the land."'

    Kadmiel halted, all black against the pale green sky
    beyond the wood - a huge robed figure, like the Moses in
    the picture-Bible.
    'I rose. I went out, and as I shut the door on that House
    of Foolishness, the woman looked from the window and
    whispered, "I have prevailed on my husband to tell the
    King!" I answered: "There is no need. The Lord is with me."

    'In that hour the Lord gave me full understanding of all
    that I must do; and His Hand covered me in my ways.
    First I went to London, to a physician of our people, who
    sold me certain drugs that I needed. You shall see why.
    Thence I went swiftly to Pevensey. Men fought all
    around me, for there were neither rulers nor judges in the
    abominable land. Yet when I walked by them they cried
    out that I was one Ahasuerus, a Jew, condemned, as they
    believe, to live for ever, and they fled from me every-
    ways. Thus the Lord saved me for my work, and at
    Pevensey I bought me a little boat and moored it on the
    mud beneath the Marsh-gate of the Castle. That also God
    showed me.'

    He was as calm as though he were speaking of some
    stranger, and his voice filled the little bare wood with
    rolling music.

    'I cast' - his hand went to his breast, and again the
    strange jewel gleamed - 'I cast the drugs which I had
    prepared into the common well of the Castle. Nay, I did
    no harm. The more we physicians know, the less do we
    do. Only the fool says: "I dare." I caused a blotched and
    itching rash to break out upon their skins, but I knew it
    would fade in fifteen days. I did not stretch out my hand
    against their life. They in the Castle thought it was the
    Plague, and they ran out, taking with them their very dogs.

    'A Christian physician, seeing that I was a Jew and a
    stranger, vowed that I had brought the sickness from
    London. This is the one time I have ever heard a Christian
    leech speak truth of any disease. Thereupon the people
    beat me, but a merciful woman said: "Do not kill him
    now. Push him into our Castle with his Plague, and if, as
    he says, it will abate on the fifteenth day, we can kill him
    then." Why not? They drove me across the drawbridge of
    the Castle, and fled back to their booths. Thus I came to
    be alone with the treasure.'

    'But did you know this was all going to happen just
    right?' said Una.

    'My Prophecy was that I should be a Lawgiver to a
    People of a strange land and a hard speech. I knew I
    should not die. I washed my cuts. I found the tide-well in
    the wall, and from Sabbath to Sabbath I dove and dug
    there in that empty, Christian-smelling fortress. He! I
    spoiled the Egyptians! He! If they had only known! I
    drew up many good loads of gold, which I loaded by
    night into my boat. There had been gold dust too, but
    that had been washed out by the tides.'

    'Didn't you ever wonder who had put it there?' said
    Dan, stealing a glance at Puck's calm, dark face under the
    hood of his gown. Puck shook his head and pursed his lips.

    'Often; for the gold was new to me,' Kadmiel replied. 'I
    know the Golds. I can judge them in the dark; but this
    was heavier and redder than any we deal in. Perhaps it
    was the very gold of Parvaim. Eh, why not? It went to my
    heart to heave it on to the mud, but I saw well that if the
    evil thing remained, or if even the hope of finding it
    remained, the King would not sign the New Laws, and
    the land would perish.'

    'Oh, Marvel!' said Puck, beneath his breath, rustling in
    the dead leaves.

    'When the boat was loaded I washed my hands seven
    times, and pared beneath my nails, for I would not keep
    one grain. I went out by the little gate where the Castle's
    refuse is thrown. I dared not hoist sail lest men should
    see me; but the Lord commanded the tide to bear me
    carefully, and I was far from land before the morning.'

    'Weren't you afraid?' said Una.

    'Why? There were no Christians in the boat. At sunrise
    I made my prayer, and cast the gold - all - all that gold -
    into the deep sea! A King's ransom - no, the ransom of a
    People! When I had loosed hold of the last bar, the Lord
    commanded the tide to return me to a haven at the mouth
    of a river, and thence I walked across a wilderness to
    Lewes, where I have brethren. They opened the door to
    me, and they say - I had not eaten for two days - they say
    that I fell across the threshold, crying: "I have sunk an
    army with horsemen in the sea!"'

    'But you hadn't,' said Una. 'Oh, yes! I see! You meant
    that King John might have spent it on that?'

    'Even so,' said Kadmiel.

    The firing broke out again close behind them. The
    pheasants poured over the top of a belt of tall firs. They
    could see young Mr Meyer, in his new yellow gaiters,
    very busy and excited at the end of the line, and they
    could hear the thud of the falling birds.

    'But what did Elias of Bury do?' Puck demanded. 'He
    had promised money to the King.'

    Kadmiel smiled grimly. 'I sent him word from London
    that the Lord was on my side. When he heard that the
    Plague had broken out in Pevensey, and that a Jew had
    been thrust into the Castle to cure it, he understood my
    word was true. He and Adah hurried to Lewes and asked
    me for an accounting. He still looked on the gold as his
    own. I told them where I had laid it, and I gave them full
    leave to pick it up ... Eh, well! The curses of a fool and
    the dust of a journey are two things no wise man can
    escape ... But I pitied Elias! The King was wroth with
    him because he could not lend; the Barons were wroth
    too because they heard that he would have lent to the
    King; and Adah was wroth with him because she was an
    odious woman. They took ship from Lewes to Spain.
    That was wise!'

    'And you? Did you see the signing of the Law at
    Runnymede?' said Puck, as Kadmiel laughed noiselessly.

    'Nay. Who am I to meddle with things too high for me?
    I returned to Bury, and lent money on the autumn crops.
    Why not?'

    There was a crackle overhead. A cock-pheasant that
    had sheered aside after being hit spattered down almost
    on top of them, driving up the dry leaves like a shell. Flora
    and Folly threw themselves at it; the children rushed
    forward, and when they had beaten them off and
    smoothed down the plumage Kadmiel had disappeared.

    'Well,' said Puck calmly, 'what did you think of it?
    Weland gave the Sword! The Sword gave the Treasure,
    and the Treasure gave the Law. It's as natural as an oak growing.'

    'I don't understand. Didn't he know it was Sir
    Richard's old treasure?' said Dan. 'And why did Sir
    Richard and Brother Hugh leave it lying about? And - and -'

    'Never mind,' said Una politely. 'He'll let us come
    and go and look and know another time. Won't you, Puck?'
    'Another time maybe,' Puck answered. 'Brr! It's cold -
    and late. I'll race you towards home!'

    They hurried down into the sheltered valley. The sun
    had almost sunk behind Cherry Clack, the trodden
    ground by the cattle-gates was freezing at the edges, and
    the new-waked north wind blew the night on them from
    over the hills. They picked up their feet and flew across
    the browned pastures, and when they halted, panting in
    the steam of their own breath, the dead leaves whirled up
    behind them. There was Oak and Ash and Thorn enough
    in that year-end shower to magic away a thousand
    memories.

    So they trotted to the brook at the bottom of the lawn,
    wondering why Flora and Folly had missed the quarry-hole fox.

    Old Hobden was just finishing some hedge-work.
    They saw his white smock glimmer in the twilight where
    he faggoted the rubbish.

    'Winter, he's come, I reckon, Mus' Dan,' he called.
    'Hard times now till Heffle Cuckoo Fair. Yes, we'll all be
    glad to see the Old Woman let the Cuckoo out o' the
    basket for to start lawful Spring in England.'

    They heard a crash, and a stamp and a splash of water
    as though a heavy old cow were crossing almost under
    their noses.

    Hobden ran forward angrily to the ford.

    'Gleason's bull again, playin' Robin all over the Farm!
    Oh, look, Mus' Dan - his great footmark as big as a
    trencher. No bounds to his impidence! He might count
    himself to be a man or - or Somebody -'

    A voice the other side of the brook boomed:

         'I wonder who his cloak would turn
         When Puck had led him round,
         Or where those walking fires would burn -'

    Then the children went in singing 'Farewell, Rewards
    and Fairies' at the tops of their voices. They had forgotten
    that they had not even said good-night to Puck.



    The Children's Song




    Land of our Birth, we pledge to thee
    Our love and toil in the years to be;
    When we are grown and take our place
    As men and women with our race.

    Father in Heaven Who lovest all,
    Oh, help Thy children when they call;
    That they may build from age to age
    An undefiled heritage.

    Teach us to bear the yoke in youth,
    With steadfastness and careful truth;
    That, in our time, Thy Grace may give
    The Truth whereby the Nations live.

    Teach us to rule ourselves alway,
    Controlled and cleanly night and day;
    That we may bring, if need arise,
    No maimed or worthless sacrifice.

    Teach us to look in all our ends,
    On Thee for judge, and not our friends;
    That we, with Thee, may walk uncowed
    By fear or favour of the crowd.

    Teach us the Strength that cannot seek,
    By deed or thought, to hurt the weak;
    That, under Thee, we may possess
    Man's strength to comfort man's distress.

    Teach us Delight in simple things,
    And Mirth that has no bitter springs;
    Forgiveness free of evil done,
    And Love to all men 'neath the sun!

    Land of our Birth, our faith, our pride,
    For whose dear sake our fathers died;
    O Motherland, we pledge to thee
    Head, heart and hand through the years to be!