Venus, governed everybody and everything in the world. They all lived
in Houses--he mapped out some of them against the dark with a busy
forefinger--and they moved from House to House like pieces at draughts;
and they went loving and hating each other all over the skies. If you
knew their likes and dislikes, he said, you could make them cure your
patient and hurt your enemy, and find out the secret causes of things.
He talked of these five Planets as though they belonged to him, or as
though he were playing long games against them. The children burrowed
in the hay up to their chins, and looked out over the half-door at the
solemn, star-powdered sky till they seemed to be falling upside down
into it, while Mr Culpeper talked about 'trines' and 'oppositions' and
'conjunctions' and 'sympathies' and 'antipathies' in a tone that just
matched things.

A rat ran between Middenboro's feet, and the old pony stamped.

'Mid hates rats,' said Dan, and passed him over a lock of hay. 'I wonder
why.'

'Divine Astrology tells us,' said Mr Culpeper. 'The horse, being a
martial beast that beareth man to battle, belongs naturally to the red
planet Mars--the Lord of War. I would show you him, but he's too near
his setting. Rats and mice, doing their businesses by night, come under
the dominion of our Lady the Moon. Now between Mars and Luna, the one
red, t'other white, the one hot t'other cold and so forth, stands, as
I have told you, a natural antipathy, or, as you say, hatred. Which
antipathy their creatures do inherit. Whence, good people, you may both
see and hear your cattle stamp in their stalls for the self-same causes
as decree the passages of the stars across the unalterable face of
Heaven! Ahem!' Puck lay along chewing a leaf. They felt him shake with
laughter, and Mr Culpeper sat up stiffly.

'I myself' said he, 'have saved men's lives, and not a few neither, by
observing at the proper time--there is a time, mark you, for all
things under the sun--by observing, I say, so small a beast as a rat
in conjunction with so great a matter as this dread arch above us.' He
swept his hand across the sky. 'Yet there are those,' he went on sourly,
'who have years without knowledge.'

'Right,' said Puck. 'No fool like an old fool.'

Mr Culpeper wrapped his cloak round him and sat still while the children
stared at the Great Bear on the hilltop.

'Give him time,' Puck whispered behind his hand. 'He turns like a
timber-tug--all of a pi