"Then here goes," said Martin, "and I only pray you to set your sympathies also in motion while I endeavor to keep them going with the story of Proud Rosalind and the Hart-Royal." PROUD ROSALIND AND THE HART-ROYAL There was once, dear maidens, a man-of-all-trades who lived by the Ferry at Bury. And nobody knew where he came from. For the chief of his trades he was an armorer, for it was in the far-away times when men thought danger could only be faced and honor won in a case of steel; not having learned that either against danger or for honor the naked heart is the fittest wear. So this man, whose name was Harding, kept his fires going for men's needs, and women's too; for besides making and mending swords and knives and greaves for the one, he would also make brooches and buckles and chains for the other; and tools for the peasants. They sometimes called him the Red Smith. In person Harding was ruddy, though his fairness differed from the fairness of the natives, and his speech was not wholly their speech. He was a man of mighty brawn and stature, his eyes gleamed like blue ice seen under a fierce sun, the hair of his head and his beard glittered like red gold, and the finer hair on his great arms and breast overlaid with an amber sheen the red-bronze of his skin. He seemed a man made to move the mountains of the world; yet truth to tell, he was a most indifferent smith. (Martin: Are you not quite comfortable, Mistress Jane? Jane: I am perfectly comfortable, thank you, Master Pippin. Martin: I fancied you were a trifle unsettled. Jane: No, indeed. What would unsettle me? Martin: I haven't the ghost of a notion.) I have heard gossips tell, but it has since been forgotten or discredited, that this part of the river was then known as Wayland's Ferry; for this, it was said, was one of the several places in England where the spirit lurked of Wayland the Smith, who was the cunningest worker in metal ever told of in song or story, and he had come overseas from the North where men worshiped him as a god. No one in Bury had ever seen the shape of Wayland, but all believed in him devoutly, for this was told of him, and truly: that any one coming to the ferry with an unshod steed had only to lay a penny on the ground and cry aloud, "Wayland Smith, shoe me my horse!" and so withdraw. And on coming again he would find his horse shod with a craft unknown to human hands, and his penny gone. And nobody thought of attributing to Harding the work of Wayland, partly because no human smith would have worked for so mean a fee as was accepted by the god, and chiefly because the quality of the workmanship of the man and the god was as dissimilar as that of clay and gold.