p! goes the widow with
A brand new ring!"

And when the boy took a hammer and joined in he fell silent.
Taffy soon observed that a singular friendship knit these two men,
who were both unmarried. Mendarva had been a famous wrestler in his
day, and his great ambition now was to train the other to win the
County belt. Often after work the pair would try a hitch together on
the triangle of turf, with Taffy for stickler, Mendarva illustrating
and explaining, the Dane nodding seriously whenever he understood,
but never answering a word. Afterwards the boy recalled these bouts
very vividly--the clear evening sky, the shoulders of the two big men
shining against the level sun as they gripped and swayed, their long
shadows on the grass under which (as he remembered) the poor
self-murdered woman lay buried.

He thought of her at night, sometimes, as he worked alone at the
forge; for Mendarva allowed him the keys and use of the smithy
overtime, in consideration of a small payment for coal. And then he
blew his fire and hammered, with a couple of candles on the bench and
a Homer between them; and beat the long hexameters into his memory.
The incongruity of it never struck him. He was going to be a great
man, and somehow this was going to be the way. These scraps of
iron--these tools of his forging--were to grow into the arms and
shield of Achilles. In its own time would come the magic moment, the
shield find its true circumference and swing to the balance of his
arm, proof and complete.

en d etithei thotamoio mega stheuos okeanoio
antuga pad pumatev sakeos puka poietoi. . .

CHAPTER XVI.

LIZZIE AND HONORIA.

His apprenticeship lasted a year and six months, and all this while
he lived with the Jolls, walking home every Sunday morning and
returning every Sunday night, rain or shine. He carried his deftness
of hand into his new trade, and it was Mendarva who begged and
obtained an extension of the time agreed on, "Rather than lose the
boy I'll tache en for love." So Taffy stayed on for another six
months. He was now in his seventeenth year--a boy no longer.
One evening, as he blew up his smithy fire, the glow of it fell on
the form of a woman standing just outside the window and watching
him. He had no silly fears of ghosts: but the thought of the buried
woman flashed across his mind and he dropped his pincers with a
clatter.

"'Tis only me," said the woman. "You needn't to be afeard."