this morning.'

'I'll not afflict ye, lad,' said Hal, while Puck roared. 'Only 'tis
strange to think how that little church was rebuilt, re-roofed, and made
glorious, thanks to some few godly Sussex iron-masters, a Bristow sailor
lad, a proud ass called Hal o' the Draft because, d'you see, he was
always drawing and drafting; and'--he dragged the words slowly--'_and_ a
Scotch pirate.'

'Pirate?' said Dan. He wriggled like a hooked fish.

'Even that Andrew Barton you were singing of on the stair just now.' He
dipped again in the ink-well, and held his breath over a sweeping line,
as though he had forgotten everything else.

'Pirates don't build churches, do they?' said Dan. 'Or _do_ they?'

'They help mightily,' Hal laughed. 'But you were at your lessons this
morn, Jack Scholar.'

'Oh, pirates aren't lessons. It was only Bruce and his silly old
spider,' said Una. 'Why did Sir Andrew Barton help you?'

'I question if he ever knew it,' said Hal, twinkling. 'Robin, how a'
mischief's name am I to tell these innocents what comes of sinful
pride?'

'Oh, we know all about _that_,' said Una pertly. 'If you get too
beany--that's cheeky--you get sat upon, of course.'

Hal considered a moment, pen in air, and Puck said some long words.

'Aha! that was my case too,' he cried. 'Beany--you say--but certainly I
did not conduct myself well. I was proud of--of such things as
porches--a Galilee porch at Lincoln for choice--proud of one
Torrigiano's arm on my shoulder, proud of my knighthood when I made the
gilt scroll-work for the _Sovereign_--our King's ship. But Father Roger
sitting in Merton Library, he did not forget me. At the top of my pride,
when I and no other should have builded the porch at Lincoln, he laid
it on me with a terrible forefinger to go back to my Sussex clays and
rebuild, at my own charges, my own church, where us Dawes have been
buried for six generations. "Out! Son of my Art!" said he. "Fight the
Devil at home ere you call yourself a man and a craftsman." And I
quaked, and I went ... How's yon, Robin?' He flourished the finished
sketch before Puck.

'Me! Me past peradventure,' said Puck, smirking like a man at a mirror.
'Ah, see! The rain has took off! I hate housen in daylight.'

'Whoop! Holiday!' cried Hal, leaping up. 'Who's for my Little Lindens?
We can talk there.'

They tumbled downstairs, and turned past the dripping willows by the
sunny mill-dam.

'Body o' me,' said Hal, staring at the hop