"Now, many months had passed in this manner, and still I was employed about the king's household. This lord of Calos distinguished me, as I have said, beyond my comrades. I had a great vigor of limb which is not common among this people, except in so much as it moves them to great agility. They are rather light, swift and expert, than powerful in war; and trust rather to great cunning than superior strength, in the meeting with their enemies. The king of Calos greatly admired to see me lift heavy logs of timber, such as would have borne down any among his people if laid upon his shoulders. But he himself had a strength superior to his people, and he wondered even more when, striving to lift the logs which I laid down, he found it beyond his mastery. Then, he put his bow into my hand, and giving me a cloth-yard shaft of reed, well tipped with a flinty barb, and dressed with an eagle's feather, he bade me draw it to the head, and send it as I would. Upon which, doing so, he greatly wondered to see how rapid and distant was the flight, for well he knew that the ability to shoot the arrow far comes rather from sleight than from strength, and is an art that only grows from practice. But this, perhaps, had not fully given me to the confidence of the king, had it not been for a service which I rendered on one occasion to his favorite son, a boy of but twelve years of age, whom I plucked from beneath the feet of a great stag, which the hunters had wounded in the forest. The red-men greatly delight to see their sons take part in the chase, even while their gristle is yet soft and their limbs feeble; for by this early practice they desired to make them strong and skilful. The son of the lord of Calos was a youth, tall and strong beyond his years; and because of the fondness of his father, exceedingly audacious in all manner of sports and strifes. Thus it was that, having seen a great stag wounded by the shaft of his sire, he had run in upon him with his slender spear. The staff of the spear broke, even as the barb penetrated the breast of the beast, and the boy fell forward at the mercy of his mighty antlers. Then was it that, seeing the lad's danger,--for I was at hand, bearing the victuals for the hunters--I threw down the basket, and rushing in, took the stag by his horns, in season for the lad to recover himself. The lord of Calos drew nigh and saw, but he offered no help, leaving it to his son to draw the keen knife which he carried, over the throat of the struggling beast. And, excepting what the boy said to me of thanks, nothing did I hear of the thing which I had done. But, three weeks after, the king made his preparations, for a war party against the mountain Indians. Then he spoke to me, saying, in his own language,--which, by this time, I could understand,--Barbu,--this was the name which had been given me because of my beard--Barbu, it is not fit that one with such limbs and skill as thou hast, should labor still