s a great country. Your names are great too,' said Puck.

'One cannot feed some things on names and songs'; the man hit himself on
the chest. 'It is better--always better--to count one's children safe
round the fire, their Mother among them.'

'Ahai!' said Puck. 'I think this will be a very old tale.'

'I warm myself and eat at any fire that I choose, but there is no _one_
to light me a fire or cook my meat. I sold all that when I bought the
Magic Knife for my people. It was not right that The Beast should master
man. What else could I have done?'

'I hear. I know. I listen,' said Puck.

'When I was old enough to take my place in the Sheepguard, The Beast
gnawed all our country like a bone between his teeth. He came in behind
the flocks at watering-time, and watched them round the Dew-ponds; he
leaped into the folds between our knees at the shearing; he walked out
alongside the grazing flocks, and chose his meat on the hoof while our
boys threw flints at him; he crept by night into the huts, and licked
the babe from between the mother's hands; he called his companions and
pulled down men in broad daylight on the Naked Chalk. No--not always did
he do so! _This_ was his cunning! He would go away for a while to let us
forget him. A year--two years perhaps--we neither smelt, nor heard, nor
saw him. When our flocks had increased; when our men did not always look
behind them; when children strayed from the fenced places; when our
women walked alone to draw water--back, back, back came the Curse of the
Chalk, Grey Shepherd, Feet-in-the Night--The Beast, The Beast, The
Beast!

'He laughed at our little brittle arrows and our poor blunt spears. He
learned to run in under the stroke of the hammer. I think he knew when
there was a flaw in the flint. Often it does not show till you bring it
down on his snout. Then--_Pouf!_--the false flint falls all to flinders,
and you are left with the hammer-handle in your fist, and his teeth in
your flank! I have felt them. At evening, too, in the dew, or when it
has misted and rained, your spear-head lashings slack off, though you
have kept them beneath your cloak all day. You are alone--but so close
to the home ponds that you stop to tighten the sinews with hands, teeth,
and a piece of driftwood. You bend over and pull--so! That is the minute
for which he has followed you since the stars went out. "Aarh!" he says.
"Wurr-aarh!" he says.' (Norton's Pit gave back the growl like a pack of
r