‘“Go!” she says, “Go with my Leave an’ Goodwill.”’ _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE In the very spot where Dan had stood as Puck they saw a 6 small, brown, broad-shouldered, pointy-eared person with a snub nose, slanting blue eyes, and a grin that ran right across his freckled face. ‘There’s where you meet hunters, and trappers for the 152 Circuses, prodding along chained bears and muzzled wolves.’ ‘Hoity-toity!’ he cried. ‘Here’s Pride in purple 212 feathers! Here’s wrathy contempt and the Pomps of the Flesh!’... And he doffed his cap to the bubbling bird. PUCK OF POOK’S HILL PUCK’S SONG _See you the dimpled track that runs,_ _All hollow through the wheat?_ _O that was where they hauled the guns_ _That smote King Philip’s fleet._ _See you our little mill that clacks,_ _So busy by the brook?_ _She has ground her corn and paid her tax_ _Ever since Domesday Book._ _See you our stilly woods of oak,_ _And the dread ditch beside?_ _O that was where the Saxons broke,_ _On the day that Harold died._ _See you the windy levels spread_ _About the gates of Rye?_ _O that was where the Northmen fled,_ _When Alfred’s ships came by._ _See you our pastures wide and lone,_ _Where the red oxen browse?_ _O there was a City thronged and known,_ _Ere London boasted a house._ _And see you, after rain, the trace_ _Of mound and ditch and wall?_ _O that was a Legion’s camping-place,_ _When Cæsar sailed from Gaul._ _And see you marks that show and fade,_ _Like shadows on the Downs?_ _O they are the lines the Flint Men made,_ _To guard their wondrous towns._ _Trackway and Camp and City lost,_ _Salt Marsh where now is corn;_ _Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,_ _And so was England born!_ _She is not any common Earth,_ _Water or wood or air,_ _But Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye,_ _Where you and I will fare._ WELAND’S SWORD WELAND’S SWORD(1) The children were at the Theatre, acting to Three Cows as much as they could remember of _Midsummer Night’s Dream_. Their father had made them a small play out of the big Shakespeare one, and they had rehearsed it with him and with their mother till they could say it by heart. They began where Nick Bottom the weaver comes out of the bushes with a donkey’s head on his shoulder, and finds Titania, Queen of the Fairies, asleep. Then they skipped to the part where Bottom asks three little fairies to scratch his head and bring him honey, and they ended where he falls asleep in Titania’s arms. Dan was Puck and Nick Bottom, as well as all three Fairies. He wore a pointy-eared cloth cap for Puck, and a paper donkey’s head out of a Christmas cracker—but it tore if you were not careful—for Bottom. Una was Titania, with a wreath of columbines and a foxglove wand.