h, he was a man!"

"Nevertheless," struck in the wren, "this is a good fellow too; and a
smith, whose trade is as old as your King Arthur's. We will prosper
him in it."

"What will you give him?" asked the titlark.

"He is lying at this moment on the trefoil that commands all metals.
Let him look to his gun when he awakes."

"Ah!" said the titlark, "I told you that secret. I was with Teague
the Smith when he discovered it. . . . But he discovered it too late;
and, besides, he was a dreamer, and used it only to make crosses and
charms and womanish ornaments."

"It's no use to _us_, anyhow," said the practical wren. "So let us
give it away. I hate waste."

"I doubt," said the titlark, "it will be much profit to him,
wonderful though it is."

"Well," said the wren, "a present's a present. Folks with a living
to get must give what they can afford."

It is not wise, as a rule, to sleep on the bare ground in December.
But Young John awoke warm and jolly as a sandboy. He picked up his
gun. It was bent and curiously twisted in the barrel. "Hallo!" said
he, and peered closely into the short turf where it had lain. . . .

When he reached home his mother cried out joyfully, seeing his
game-bag and how it bulged. She cried out to a different tune when
he showed her what it contained--clods and clumps of turf, matted
over with a tiny close-growing plant that might have been any common
moss for aught she knew (or recked) of the difference.

"But where are all the birds you promised me?"

He held out his gun--he had promised no birds, but that mattered
nothing. His father took it to the lamp and glanced at it; put on
his horn spectacles slowly, and peered at it. He was silent for a
long while. Young John had turned inattentively from his mother's
reproaches, and stood watching him.

The old man swung about at length. "When did ye contrive this?" he
asked, rubbing the twist of the gun-barrel with his thumb. "And the
forge not heated all this day!"

"We'll heat it to-night after supper," said Young John.

In the Church of Porthennis, up to twenty-five years ago, there
stood a screen of ironwork--a marvel of arabesques and intricate
traceries, with baskets of flowers, sea-monsters, Cherubim, tying the
filigree-work and looping it together in knots and centres.
One panel had for subject a spider midmost in a web, to visit which
smiths came hundreds of miles, from all over the country, and
wondered. Fo