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Page 8
'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!'
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