"The story doesn't tell us anything about that," said Mr. Norton. "But heroes in those days, Milly, must have had something magical about them so that they were able to do things that men and women can't do now. Do you know, children, that this story that you have been listening to is more than a thousand years old? Can you fancy that?" "No," said Milly, shaking her head. "I can't fancy it a bit, father. It's too long. It makes me puzzled to think of so many years." "Years and years and years and _years_!" said Olly. "When father's grandfather was a little boy." Mr. Norton laughed. "Can't you think of anything farther back than that, Olly? It would take a great many grandfathers, and grandfathers' grandfathers, to get back to the time when the story of Beowulf was made. And here am I telling it to you just in the same way as fathers used to tell it to their children a thousand years ago." "I suppose the children liked it so, they wouldn't let their fathers forget it," said Milly. "And then when they grew up they told it to their children. I shall tell it to my children when I grow up. I think I shall tell it to Katie to-morrow." "Father," said Olly, "did Beowulf die--ever?" "Yes. When he was quite an old man he had another great fight with a dragon, who was guarding a cave full of golden treasure on the sea-shore; and though he killed the dragon, the dragon gave him a terrible wound, so that when his friends came to look for him they found him lying all but dead in the cave. He was just able to tell them to make a great mound of earth over him when he was dead, on a high rock close by, that sailors might see it from their ships and think of him when they saw it, and then he died. And when he was dead they carried him up to the rock, and there they burned his body, and then they built up a great high mound of earth, and they put Beowulf's bones inside, and all the treasure from the dragon's cave. They were ten days building up the mound. Then when it was all done they rode around it weeping and chanting sorrowful songs, and at last they left him there, saying as they went away that never should they see so good a king or so true a master any more. And for hundreds of years afterwards, when the sailors out at sea saw the high mound rising on its point of rock, they said one to another, 'There is Beowulf's Mount,' and they began to tell each other of Beowulf's brave deeds--how he lived and how he died, and how he fought with Grendel and the wild sea dragons. There, now, I have told you all I know about Beowulf," said Mr. Norton, getting up and turning the children off his knee, "and if it isn't somebody else's turn now it ought to be." "Aunt Emma! Aunt Emma!" shouted Olly, who was so greedy for stories that he could almost listen all day long without being tired.