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 re-build, at my own charges, my own
church, where we 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-garden, where the hops were
just ready to blossom. 'What are these vines? No, not vines, and they
twine the wrong way to beans.' He began to draw in his ready book.

'Hops. New since your day,' said Puck. 'They're an herb of Mars,