'

'Wonderful!' The man wiped his forehead as though he were hot. 'Who
drove him away? You?'

'Many men through many years, each working in his own country. Were you
one of them?' Puck answered.

The man slid his sheepskin cloak to his waist, and without a word
pointed to his side, which was all seamed and blotched with scars. His
arms too were dimpled from shoulder to elbow with horrible white
dimples.

'I see,' said Puck. 'It is The Beast's mark. What did you use against
him?'

'Hand, hammer, and spear, as our fathers did before us.'

'So? Then how'--Puck twitched aside the man's dark-brown cloak--'how did
a Flint-worker come by _that_? Show, man, show!' He held out his little
hand.

The man slipped a long dark iron knife, almost a short sword, from his
belt, and after breathing on it, handed it hilt-first to Puck, who took
it with his head on one side, as you should when you look at the works
of a watch, squinted down the dark blade, and very delicately rubbed his
forefinger from the point to the hilt.

'Good!' said he, in a surprised tone.

'It should be. The Children of the Night made it,' the man answered.

'So I see by the iron. What might it have cost you?'

'This!' The man raised his hand to his cheek. Puck whistled like a Weald
starling.

'By the Great Rings of the Chalk!' he cried. 'Was _that_ your price?
Turn sunward that I may see better, and shut your eye.'

He slipped his hand beneath the man's chin and swung him till he faced
the children up the slope. They saw that his right eye was gone, and the
eyelid lay shrunk. Quickly Puck turned him round again, and the two sat
down.

'It was for the sheep. The sheep are the people,' said the man, in an
ashamed voice. 'What else could I have done? _You_ know, Old One.'

Puck sighed a little fluttering sigh. 'Take the knife. I listen.'

The man bowed his head, drove the knife into the turf, and while it
still quivered said: 'This is witness between us that I speak the thing
that has been. Before my Knife and the Naked Chalk I speak. Touch!'

Puck laid a hand on the hilt. It stopped shaking. The children wriggled
a little nearer.

'I am of the People of the Worked Flint. I am the one son of the
Priestess who sells the Winds to the Men of the Sea. I am the Buyer of
the Knife--the Keeper of the People,' the man began, in a sort of
singing shout. 'These are my names in this country of the Naked Chalk,
between the Trees and the Sea.'

'Yours wa