ghing. 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