and we sat and ate,
warming ourselves, while Lord Uffe talked to my lord at the end of the
table--sitting by a great red-haired man that he ever glanced at kindly,
but who with thoughtful eyes sat gazing as one seeing nothing.

As we sat there, when our first hunger was done and men were beginning
to stretch out their legs under the table, I looked about the hall. And
there was something that seemed strange about it. For some time gazing,
I could not see; then with a half-afraid feeling, a wonder, I saw that
everything was old--the benches, the arms rusted on the walls--it was as
if men had been dropped back three centuries. Even while I was yet
wondering at this and looking curiously at the old-patterned arms on
the walls--such as I had seen in the old halls we had stopped at in our
sailing, kept from ancestors--the lord of the place, Lord Uffe--a short,
stout, strong, old man, with kind face and a beard to his waist and eyes
that shut in his laughter--rose, and standing with his hand on my lord's
shoulder, spoke to him and to the table so that all might hear.

"Ye care to know," he said, smiling, "what country this may be. Then I
will tell a story to you all--see that ye are comfortable--

"Four men's lifetimes ago if they were old men there was a ship blown
off the coast while it bore a boat-load towards the south, from a burnt
town in the hard north; searchers for new places. And for days a great
wind blew them the same as it has blown you, till, in the night, no
moon, they fell upon this place, the ship shocking onto the sands and
falling in pieces, and some of the men killed. They sat in the hiding of
the rocks till the sunrise, then with the strong wind blowing in their
faces, they found their home, built it, and saved some things from out
of the ship--they were my fathers. A pleasant country; we are content; no
ships ever come; we are alone; we mow our easily-sown fields while our
children grow about us; we cut timber in limitless forests--why should we
leave it? The name of the place?" And he stood, his great beard falling
on his chest, his eyes looking kind along the board to see if we wanted
anything.

"We are lost in the seas," he said again. "Whether far or near, or north
or south, no man knows; no ship ever comes; the forest begins behind us;
nothing that shows sign of man's hand is washed to the shore; we are
alone, lost and contented. Listen to the sound of the sea; we have never
crossed it; no man ha