He saw more than that. David was that rare builder, a man who can work with his hands and see all the time inside his soul the completed work. He could no more endure slipshod work or graceless lines in his building than the knight himself could do a cowardly or dishonest thing. David would have done his task faithfully in any case, but it rejoiced his soul to find that the knight and his lady would know not only that their village church was beautiful, but why it was so. Andrew was at work upon the decorative carving of the arches of the doorway. The outer was done in broad severe lines heavily undercut; the next inner arch in a simple pattern of alternating bosses and short lines--Andrew called it the egg and dart pattern--and the inner arch in a delicate vine rather like the ivy that grew over the keep. Andrew said it was a vine found in the ruins of the Coliseum at Rome. When it came to the carving of the animals and birds and figures for the inside of the church, Andrew's designs did not quite suit Lady Philippa. They were either too classical or too grotesque; they were better fitted to the elaborate richness of a great cathedral than to a little stone church in the mountains. She would have liked figures which would seem familiar to the people, of the birds and beasts they knew, but Andrew did not know anything about this countryside. “Mother,” said Eleanor one night after this had been talked over, “what if Roger and I were to ask Andrew to go with us to Mother Izan's and see her tame birds and animals, and Gwillym's squirrel? And we could explain what he wants of them.” Like many children in such remote places, Eleanor and Roger had picked up dialects as they did rhymes or games, and often interpreted for a peasant who knew neither Norman nor Saxon and wished to make himself understood at the castle. The idea met with approval, and the next day Lady Philippa, Eleanor, Roger and Andrew went to the cottage by the Fairies' Well. They found that David had been there before them. “He's a knowledgeable man, that,” the old woman said with a shrewd smile. “He's even talked Howel into letting the clay images alone, he has. Gwillym's down by the claybank now, a-making Saint Blaise and little Merlin.” The cottage evidently was a new sort of place to Andrew, and his dark eyes were full of kindly interest as he looked about. The old dame sat humped in her doorway among her chirping, fluttering, barking and squeaking pets. An ancient raven cocked his eye wisely at the visitors, a tame hare hopped about the floor, a cat with three kittens, all as black as soot, occupied a basket, and there were also a fox cub rescued from a trap, a cosset lamb and a tiny hedgehog. Birds nested in the thatch; a squirrel barked from the lintel, and all the four-footed things of the neighborhood seemed at home there,