"Will women NEVER see what lies under their noses?" groaned Martin. "Will they ALWAYS stare over a wall, and if they're not tall enough to try to stare through it? Will they ONLY know that a thing has come to its end when they see it making a new beginning? Why, after the first kiss all tales start afresh, though they start on the second, which is as different from the first as a garden rose from a wild one. Here have I galloped you to a conclusion, and now you would set me ambling again." "Then make up your mind to it," said Joscelyn, "and amble." "Dear heaven!" went on Martin, "I begin to believe that when a woman is being kissed she doesn't even notice it for thinking, How sweet it will be when he kisses me next Tuesday fortnight!" "Then get on to Tuesday fortnight," scolded Joscelyn, "if that be the end." "The end indeed!" said Martin. "On Tuesday fortnight, at the very instant, the slippery creature is thinking, How delicious it was when he kissed me two weeks ago last Saturday! There's no end with a woman, either backwards or forwards!" "For goodness' sake," cried Joscelyn, "stop grumbling and get on with it!" "There's no end to a man's grumbling either," said Martin; "but I'll get on with it.") The tale that Harding had to tell Proud Rosalind was a long one, but I will make as short of it as I can. He told her how in his own country he was sprung of the race of Volundr, who was a God and a King and a Smith all in one; but he had been ill-used and banished, and had since haunted England where men knew him as Wayland, and he did miracles. But in his own northern land his strain continued, until Harding's father, a king himself, was like his ancestor defeated and banished, and crossed the water with his young son and a chest of relics of Old Wayland's work--a ring, a girdle, a crown, and a silver robe; a sword and bow which Rosalind knew already; and other things as well. And the boy grew up filled with the ancient wrongs of his ancestor, and he went about the country seeking Wayland's haunts; and wherever he found them he found a mossy legend, neglected and unproved, of how the god worked, or had worked, for any man's pence, and put his divine craft to laborers' service. And as in Rosalind the dream had grown of building up her fathers' honor again, so Harding had from boyhood nursed his dream of establishing that of the half-forgotten god. And he, who had inherited his ancestor's craft in metal, coming at last through Sussex settled at Bury, where the legend lay on its sick-bed; and he set up his shop by the ferry so that he might doctor it. And there he did his work in two ways; for as the Red Smith he did such work as might be done better by a hundred men, but as Wayland he did what could only have been done better by the god. And the toll he collected for that work he saved, year-in-year-out, till he should have enough to build the god a shrine. And, leaving this visible evidence behind him, he