Puck of Pook's Hill Part 14

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 G.o.dlike Kings of old.

They were the 'G.o.dlike 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 a while, 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 from 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 gra.s.ses, waving the tips of them as a cat waves the tip of her tail before she springs.

'Now welcome-welcome s.e.xtus,' sang Una, loading the catapult-

'Now welcome to thy home, Why dost thou turn and run away?

Here lies the rod of 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 believe 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 its 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 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 pa.s.sed 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 an officer 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.