It is death even for a stranger. STRANGER Your door is strangely sacred. FIRST SENTRY It is death to touch it. [_The Stranger wanders off._ [_Enter two children hand in hand._ BOY (_to the Sentry_) I want to see the King to pray for a hoop. [_The Sentry smiles._ BOY (_pushes the door; to girl_) I cannot open it. (_To the Sentry_) Will it do as well if I pray to the King's door? SENTRY Yes, quite as well. (_Turns to talk to the other Sentry_) Is there anyone in sight? SECOND SENTRY (_shading his eyes_) Nothing but a dog, and he far out on the plain. FIRST SENTRY Then we can talk awhile and eat bash. BOY King's door, I want a little hoop. [_The Sentries take a little bash between finger and thumb from pouches and put that wholly forgotten drug to their lips._ GIRL (_pointing_) My father is a taller soldier than that. BOY My father can write. He taught me. GIRL Ho! Writing frightens nobody. My father is a soldier. BOY I have a lump of gold. I found it in the stream that runs down to Gyshon. GIRL I have a poem. I found it in my own head. BOY Is it a long poem? GIRL No. But it would have been only there were no more rhymes for sky. BOY What is your poem? GIRL I saw a purple bird Go up against the sky And it went up and up And round about did fly. BOY I saw it die. GIRL That doesn't scan. BOY Oh, that doesn't matter. GIRL Do you like my poem? BOY Birds aren't purple. GIRL My bird was. BOY Oh! GIRL Oh, you don't like my poem! BOY Yes, I do. GIRL No, you don't; you think it horrid. BOY No. I don't. GIRL Yes, you do. Why didn't you say you liked it? It is the only poem I ever made. BOY I do like it. I do like it. GIRL You don't, you don't! BOY Don't be angry. I'll write it on the door for you. GIRL You'll write it? BOY Yes, I can write it. My father taught me. I'll write it with my lump of gold. It makes a yellow mark on the iron door. GIRL Oh, do write it! I would like to see it written like real poetry. [_The Boy begins to write. The Girl watches._ FIRST SENTRY You see, we'll be fighting again soon. SECOND SENTRY Only a little war. We never have more than a little war with the hill-folk. FIRST SENTRY When a man goes to fight, the curtains of the gods wax thicker than ever before between his eyes and the future; he may go to a great or to a little war. SECOND SENTRY There can only be a little war with the hill-folk. FIRST SENTRY Yet sometimes the gods laugh. SECOND SENTRY At whom? FIRST SENTRY At kings. SECOND SENTRY Why have you grown uneasy about this war in the hills? FIRST SENTRY Because the King is powerful beyond any of his fathers, and has more fighting men, more horses, and wealth that could have ransomed his father and his grandfather and dowered their queens and daughters; and every year his miners bring him more from the opal-mines and from the turquoise-quarries. He has grown very mighty. SECOND SENTRY