‘Oh, Mus’ Reynolds, Mus’ Reynolds!’ said Hobden, under his breath. ‘If I knowed all was inside your head, I’d know something wuth knowin’. Mus’ Dan an’ Miss Una, come along o’ me while I lock up my liddle hen-house.’ A PICT SONG _Rome never looks where she treads,_ _Always her heavy hooves fall,_ _On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads;_ _And Rome never heeds when we bawl._ _Her sentries pass on—that is all,_ _And we gather behind them in hordes,_ _And plot to reconquer the Wall,_ _With only our tongues for our swords._ _We are the Little Folk—we!_ _Too little to love or to hate._ _Leave us alone and you’ll see_ _How we can drag down the Great!_ _We are the worm in the wood!_ _We are the rot at the root!_ _We are the germ in the blood!_ _We are the thorn in the foot!_ _Mistletoe killing an oak—_ _Rats gnawing cables in two—_ _Moths making holes in a cloak—_ _How they must love what they do!_ _Yes,—and we Little Folk too,_ _We are as busy as they—_ _Working our works out of view—_ _Watch, and you’ll see it some day!_ _No indeed! We are not strong,_ _But we know Peoples that are._ _Yes, and we’ll guide them along,_ _To smash and destroy you in War!_ _We shall be slaves just the same?_ _Yes, we have always been slaves;_ _But you—you will die of the shame,_ _And then we shall dance on your graves!_ _We are the Little Folk, we! etc._ HAL O’ THE DRAFT _Prophets have honour all over the Earth,_ _Except in the village where they were born;_ _Where such as knew them boys from birth,_ _Nature-ally hold ’em in scorn._ _When Prophets are naughty and young and vain,_ _They make a won’erful grievance of it;_ _(You can see by their writings how they __complain),_ _But O, ’tis won’erful good for the Prophet!_ _There’s nothing Nineveh Town can give,_ _(Nor being swallowed by whales between),_ _Makes up for the place where a man’s folk live,_ _That don’t care nothing what he has been._ _He might ha’ been that, or he might ha’ been this,_ _But they love and they hate him for what he is!_ HAL O’ THE DRAFT A rainy afternoon drove Dan and Una over to play pirates in the Little Mill. If you don’t mind rats on the rafters and oats in your shoes, the mill-attic, with its trap-doors and inscriptions on beams about floods and sweethearts, is a splendid place. It is lighted by a foot-square window, called Duck Window, that looks across to Little Lindens Farm, and the spot where Jack Cade was killed. When they had climbed the attic ladder (they called it the ‘mainmast tree’ out of the ballad of Sir Andrew Barton, and Dan ‘swarved it with might and main,’ as the ballad says) they saw a man sitting on Duck window-sill. He was dressed in a plum-coloured doublet and tight plum-coloured hose, and he drew busily in a red-edged book.