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Puck of Pook's Hill

by Rudyard Kipling · English · Gutenberg #15976 · 332,907 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Puck of Pook's Hill

Author: Rudyard Kipling

Illustrator: H. R. Millar


        
Release date: June 3, 2005 [eBook #15976]
                Most recently updated: December 14, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15976

Credits: Produced by Malcolm Farmer


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUCK OF POOK'S HILL ***




Produced by Malcolm Farmer






Transcriber's note: This text was based on the 1996 plain ASCII
text created by Jo Churcher, Scarborough, Ontario (jchurche@io.org),
then proofread against a 1911 reprint of a 1906 edition (Macmillan &
Co. Ltd., London).
The illustrations by H.R. Millar have been omitted from this text-only
version.

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                          PUCK OF POOK'S HILL
                                  by
                            RUDYARD KIPLING




CONTENTS


Weland's Sword
Young Men at the Manor
The Knights of the Joyous Venture
Old Men at Pevensey
A Centurion of the Thirtieth
On the Great Wall
The Winged Hats
Hal o' the Draft
'Dymchurch Flit'
The Treasure and the Law




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 Cæsar 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-eared 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-cuk', 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 our 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 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 mill-stream 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 seizin 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 seizin?' 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 seized 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 seized 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 Peofn'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
the 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, dear. 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 azactly 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 Æneas 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 Ælueva, 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 Ælueva 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 Ælueva 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 Ælueva,' 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 Allée, 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 Ælueva 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 Ælueva 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 seizin,' said Puck, in a whisper.

'"Now thou art lawfully seized 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
Ælueva.'

'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 Ælueva'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
Ælueva 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 Ælueva, 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. 'Ohé, 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?'

'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,--
You 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 up stream 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,
That 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 sea-faring 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 as I have heard
the men in the Dane ships sing it. Not in 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 Ælueva 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.

'Té,' 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 thumbnail 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 all whither 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
foredeck 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
crosswise 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 nearby 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 inkhorn 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"--here he jerked 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 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 wheatears--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 hearthstone.

'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, to-morrow 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.

'"Té! Té!" 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!'



A Centurion of the Thirtieth


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 thumb-nail.

'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
spring-time 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 thick-heads, 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 Solis. 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 Solis,' 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 Solis. 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 Solis); 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 Solis," 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 quæ sunt fragilia.'

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

'Quo Cæsar 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. Ohé, 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 hand's breadth--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 Cæsar.'

'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 Cæsar for
smaller jokes than this."

'"True, Cæsar," 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. To-morrow, then, I
shall see you two when I inspect, and I will make you Captains of the
Wall for this work."

'"One instant, Cæsar," 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 to-morrow, 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 let

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