curved like a bird's beak.
And when folk wished to go across to the Amberley flats that lie under
the splendid shell which was once a castle, Harding would carry them,
if he was there and neither too busy nor too surly. And when they asked
the fee he always said, "When I work in metal I take metal. But for
that which flows I take only that which flows. So give me whatever you
have heart to give, as long as it is not coin." And they gave him
willingly anything they had: a flower, or an egg, or a bird's feather.
A child once gave him her curl, and a man his hand.

And when he was neither in his workshop or his boat, he hunted on the
hills. But this was a trade he put to no man's service. Harding hunted
only for himself. And because he served his own pleasure more
passionately than he served others', and was oftener seen with his bow
than with hammer or oar, he was chiefly known as the Red Hunter. Often
in the late of the year he would be away on the great hills of Bury and
Bignor and Houghton and Rewell, with their beech-woods burning on their
sides and in their hollows, and their rolling shoulders lifted out of
those autumn fires to meet in freedom the freedom of the clouds.

It was on one of his huntings he came on the Wishing-Pool. This pool
had for long been a legend in the neighborhood, and it was said that
whoever had courage to seek it in the hour before midnight on Midsummer
Eve, and thrice utter her wish aloud, would surely have that wish
granted within the year. But with time it had become a lost secret,
perhaps because its ancient reputation as the haunt of goblin things
had long since sapped the courage of the maidens of those parts; and
only great-grandmothers remembered how that once their grandmothers had
tried their fortunes there. And its whereabouts had been forgotten.

But one September Harding saw a calf-stag on Great Down. There were
wild deer on the hills then, but such a calf he had never seen before.
So he stalked it over Madehurst and Rewell, and followed it into the
thick of Rewell Wood. And when it led him to its drinking-place, he
knew that he had discovered one more secret of the hills, and that this
somber mere wherein strange waters bubbled in whispers could be no
other than the lost Wishing-Pool. The young calf might have been its
magic guard. To Harding it was a discovery more precious than the mere.
For all that it was of the first year, with its prickets only showing
where its antlers