But he was a man who had to make a story before he died. And if this had not happened Thorstan might have gone on living, and have missed his due. Also perhaps Thorbeorg would not have had a chance of showing what she was good for. Now it is all over. They are put in a tale. I don’t know what happened to Torfe and Illuge, but everyone who hears the story either hates them or forgets them: so they have _their_ reward. If Grimkel and Beorn lived to be men, I am sure Torfe and Illuge did not die in their beds.” With a deep sigh Philip stopped. For some minutes he said nothing. When he broke his silence it was to say: “Perhaps Roland will really do something like Haurd. He looks like it. He could. Don’t you think he is one of those people who look as if men would some day have to tell stories of them to one another? _He_ would not build a tower up on a mountain for nothing, and live there no better than a man could live at Clapham Junction.” Here Philip cried, which I never saw him do before or after that day. It was the beginning of the worst part of his illness. Not for many weeks was he out of bed, and once more my companion in the house, in the yard, in Our Country, or at school on those rare days when he attended. CHAPTER XVIII WHAT WILL ROLAND DO? Roland and Jack were too much my seniors, and yet still too young, to take notice of me. But I could admire them from afar for their gifts and opportunities, their good looks, their bodily prowess, liberty, and apparent lack of all care. Their activities were mostly away from home, and rumours, probably, were incomplete. Roland ran and jumped at sports, rode a horse, sometimes into the yard, sometimes out to where the fox was hunted (a little beyond _our_ range)--bicycled hither and thither--possessed a gun and used it, doubtless in a magnificent manner--dressed as he should be dressed--was more than once in trouble of some kind, I think in debt, and had once been observed by me in London walking with a dark lady of his own splendid breed, whom I never heard anything of, or saw again. What I first knew of Roland was--shortly after I began to frequent Abercorran House--a voice singing mightily in the bathroom: “Foul fall the hand that bends the steel Around the courser’s thundering heel, That e’er shall print a sable wound On fair Glamorgan’s velvet ground.” Never afterwards did he do anything that fell short of the name Roland, to which the noble war-song, at that moment, fixed its character for ever. Jack and he had been to a famous school until they were sixteen, and did no good there. Indoors they learnt very little more than a manner extremely well suited to hours of idleness. Out of doors they excelled at the more selfish sports, at athletics, boxing, sculling, shooting. So they had come home and, as Mr Morgan had nothing to suggest, they had done what suggested itself.