the flocks at watering-time, and watched them round the Dew-ponds; he
leaped into the folds between our knees at the shearing; he walked out
alongside the grazing flocks, and chose his meat on the hoof while our
boys threw flints at him; he crept by night 'into the huts, and licked
the babe from between the mother's hands; he called his companions and
pulled down men in broad daylight on the Naked Chalk. No--not always did
he do so! This was his cunning! He would go away for a while to let us
forget him. A year--two years perhaps--we neither smelt, nor heard, nor
saw him. When our flocks had increased; when our men did not always
look behind them; when children strayed from the fenced places; when our
women walked alone to draw water--back, back, back came the Curse of
the Chalk, Grey Shepherd, Feet-in-the-Night--The Beast, The Beast, The
Beast!

'He laughed at our little brittle arrows and our poor blunt spears. He
learned to run in under the stroke of the hammer. I think he knew when
there was a flaw in the flint. Often it does not show till you bring it
down on his snout. Then--Pouf!---the false flint falls all to flinders,
and you are left with the hammer-handle in your fist, and his teeth in
your flank! I have felt them. At evening, too, in the dew, or when it
has misted and rained, your spear-head lashings slack off, though you
have kept them beneath your cloak all day. You are alone--but so close
to the home ponds that you stop to tighten the sinews with hands, teeth,
and a piece of driftwood. You bend over and pull--so! That is the minute
for which he has followed you since the stars went out. "Aarh!" he
"Wurr-aarh!" he says.' (Norton Pit gave back the growl like a pack of
real wolves.) 'Then he is on your right shoulder feeling for the vein
in your neck, and--perhaps your sheep run on without you. To fight
The Beast is nothing, but to be despised by The Beast when he fights
you--that is like his teeth in the heart! Old One, why is it that men
desire so greatly, and can do so little?'

'I do not know. Did you desire so much?' said Puck.

'I desired to master The Beast. It is not right that The Beast should
master man. But my people were afraid. Even, my Mother, the Priestess,
was afraid when I told her what I desired. We were accustomed to be
afraid of The Beast. When I was made a man, and a maiden--she was a
Priestess--waited for me at the Dew-ponds, The Beast flitted from off
the Chalk. Perhaps it was a si