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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75341 ***
+
+
+[Illustration: Thia and Thol--B.C. 39,000.]
+
+
+
+
+  THE
+  DREADFUL DRAGON
+  OF
+  HAY HILL
+
+  MAX BEERBOHM
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD.
+
+
+
+
+  _First published in “A Variety of Things”_ (_Volume ten
+  of the Limited Edition of Max Beerbohm’s Works_).
+
+  _First published separately in book form, November, 1928._
+
+  _New impression, January, 1929._
+
+  _Printed in Great Britain_
+
+
+
+
+THE DREADFUL DRAGON OF HAY HILL
+
+
+In the faint early dawn of a day in the midst of a golden summer, a
+column of smoke was seen rising from Hay Hill, rising thickly, not
+without sparks in it. Danger to the lives of the dressmakers in Dover
+Street was not apprehended. The fire-brigade was not called out. The
+fire-brigade had not been called into existence. Dover Street had not
+yet been built. I tell of a time that was thirty-nine thousand years
+before the birth of Christ.
+
+To imagine Hay Hill as it then was, you must forget much of what,
+as you approach it from Berkeley Square or from Piccadilly, it is
+now. You knew it in better days, as I did?--days when its seemly old
+Georgian charm had not vanished under the superimposition of two vast
+high barracks for the wealthier sort of bachelors to live in? You
+remember how, in frosty weather, the horse of your hansom used to skate
+hopelessly down the slope of it and collapse, pitching you out, at the
+foot of it? Such memories will not serve. They are far too recent. You
+must imagine just a green hill with some trees and bushes on it. You
+must imagine it far higher than it is nowadays, tapering to a summit
+not yet planed off for the purpose of Dover Street; and steeper; and
+with two caves aloft in it; and bright, bright green.
+
+And conceive that its smiling wildness made no contrast with aught that
+was around. Berkeley Square smiled wildly too. Berkeley Square had no
+squareness. It was but a green valley that went, uninterrupted by any
+Piccadilly, into the Green Park. And through the midst of it a clear
+stream went babbling and meandering, making all manner of queer twists
+and turns on its off-hand way to the marshlands of Pimlico down yonder.
+Modern engineers have driven this stream ignominiously underground; but
+at that time there it still was, visible, playful, fringed with reeds,
+darted about in by small fishes, licensed to reflect sky. And it had
+tributaries! The landscape that I speak of, the great rolling landscape
+that comprised all Mayfair, was everywhere intersected by tiny brooks,
+whose waters, for what they were worth, sooner or later trickled
+brightly into that main stream. Here and there, quite fortuitously,
+in groups or singly, stood willows and silver birches, full of that
+wistful grace which we regard as peculiarly modern. But not till the
+landscape reached Hyde Park did trees exert a strong influence over
+it. Then they exerted a very strong influence indeed. They hemmed the
+whole thing in. Hyde Park, which was a dense and immemorial forest,
+did not pause where the Marble Arch is, but swept on to envelop all
+Paddington and Marylebone and most of Bloomsbury, and then, skirting
+Soho, over-ran everything from Covent Garden to Fetter Lane, and in
+a rush southward was brought up sharp only by the edge of the sheer
+cliffs that banked this part of the Thames.
+
+The Thames, wherever it was not thus sharply opposed, was as tyrannous
+as the very forest. It knew no mercy for the lowly. Westminster, like
+Pimlico, was a mere swamp, miasmal, malarial, frequented by frogs
+only, whose croaks, no other sound intervening, made hideous to the
+ear a district now nobly and forever resonant with the silver voices
+of choristers and the golden voices of senators. Westminster is firm
+underfoot nowadays; yet, even so, as you come away from it up the Duke
+of York’s steps, you feel that you are mounting into a drier, brisker
+air; and this sensation is powerfully repeated when anon you climb St.
+James’s Street. Not lower, you feel, not lower than Piccadilly would
+you have your home. And this, it would seem, was just what the average
+man felt forty-one thousand years ago. Nature had placed in the steep
+chalky slopes from the marshes a fair number of commodious caves; but
+these were almost always vacant. Only on the higher levels did human
+creatures abound.
+
+And scant enough, by our present standards, that abundance was. In
+all the space which the forest had left free--not merely all Mayfair,
+remember: all Soho, too, and all that lies between them--the
+population was hardly more than three hundred souls. So low a figure
+is hard to grasp. So few people, in a place so teeming now, are almost
+beneath our notice. Almost, but not quite. What there was of them was
+not bad.
+
+Nature, as a Roman truly said, does not work by leaps. What we call
+Evolution is a quite exasperatingly slow process. We should like to
+compare favourably with even the latest of our predecessors. We wince
+whenever we read a declaration by some eminent biologist that the skull
+of the prehistoric man whose bones have just been unearthed in this or
+that district differs but slightly from the skull of the average man in
+the twentieth century. I hate having to tell you that the persons in
+this narrative had well-shaped heads, and that if their jaws were more
+prominent, their teeth sharper, their backs less upright, their arms
+longer and hairier, and their feet suppler than our own, the difference
+in each case was so faint as to be almost negligible.
+
+Of course they were a simpler folk than we are. They knew far less than
+we know. They did not, for example, know they were living thirty-nine
+thousand years before Christ; and ‘protopalaeolithic’ was a term they
+_never_ used. They regarded themselves as very modern and very greatly
+enlightened. They marvelled at their ingenuities in the use of flint
+and stone. They held that their ancestors had been crude in thought and
+in mode of life, but not unblest with a certain vigour and nobility
+of character which they themselves lacked. They thought that their
+descendants would be a rather feeble, peevish race, yet that somehow in
+the far future, a state of general goodness and felicity would set in,
+to abide forever. But I seem to be failing in my effort to stress the
+difference between these people and ourselves. Let us hold fast to the
+pleasing fact that they really were less well-educated.
+
+They could neither read nor write, and were so weak in their arithmetic
+that not a shepherd among them could count his sheep correctly, nor a
+goat-herd his goats. And their pitiful geography! Glancing northward
+above their forest, they saw the mountainous gaunt region that is
+Hampstead, that is Highgate; southward, across the river and its wide
+fens, the ridges of a nameless Surrey; but as to how the land lay
+beyond those barriers they had only the haziest notion. That there was
+land they knew. For, though they themselves never ventured further
+than the edge of the marshes, or than the fringe of the tangled forest
+that bounded the rest of their domain, certain other people were more
+venturesome: often enough it would happen that some stranger, some
+dark-haired and dark-eyed nomad, passed this way, blinking from the
+forest or soaked from the river; and glad always was such an one to
+rest awhile here, and tell to his good hosts tales of the outlying
+world. Tales very marvellous to the dwellers in this sleek safe
+homeland!--tales of rugged places where no men are, or few, and these
+in peril by night and by day; tales of the lion, a creature with yellow
+eyes and a great mop of yellow hair to his head, a swift and strong
+creature, without pity; and of the tusked mastodon, taller than the
+oldest oak, and shaking the ground he walks on; and of the winged
+dragon, that huge beast, poising so high in the air that he looks no
+bigger than a hawk, yet reaching his prey on earth as instantly as a
+hawk his; and of the huge crawling dragon, that breathes fire through
+his nostrils and scorches black the grass as he goes hunting, hunting;
+of the elephant, who fears nothing but mastodons and dragons; of the
+hyena and the tiger, and of beasts beside whom these seem not dreadful.
+
+Wide-eyed, open-mouthed, the homelanders would sit listening. ‘O
+wanderer,’ would say one, ‘tell us more of the mastodon, that is taller
+than the oldest oak.’ And another would say, ‘Make again for us, O
+wanderer, the noise that a lion makes.’ And another, ‘Tell us more of
+the dragon that scorches black the grass as he goes hunting, hunting.’
+And another, ‘O you that have so much wandered, surely you will abide
+here always? Here is not hardship nor danger. We go not in fear of
+the beasts whose roast flesh you have tasted and have praised. Rather
+go they in great fear of us. The savoury deer flees from us, and has
+swifter feet than we have, yet escapes not the point of the thrown
+spear, and falls, and is ours. The hare is not often luckier, such is
+our skill. Our goats and our sheep would flee from us, but dare not,
+fearing the teeth of certain dogs who love us. We slay what we will for
+food. For us all there is plenty in all seasons. You have drunk of the
+water of our stream. Is it not fresh and cold? Have you cracked in your
+wanderings better nuts than ours? or bitten juicier apples? Surely you
+will abide here always.’
+
+And to the wanderer it would seem no bad thing that he should do so.
+Yet he did not so. When the sun had sunk and risen a few times he would
+stretch his arms, maybe gazing round at the landscape with a rather
+sardonic smile, and be gone through the forest or across the water. And
+the homelanders, nettled, would shrug their shoulders, and thank their
+gods for having rid them of a fool.
+
+Their gods were many, including the sun and moon, their clear stream,
+apple-trees and cherry-trees and fig-trees and trees that gave nuts,
+rose-bushes in summer, rain, and also fire--fire, the god that
+themselves had learnt to make from flint, fire that made meat itself
+godlike. But they prayed to no god, not being aware that they needed
+anything. And they had no priesthood. When a youth lost his heart to a
+maid he approached her, and laid his hands gently upon her shoulders,
+and then, if she did not turn away from him, he put his hands about her
+waist and lifted her three times from the ground. This sufficed: they
+were now man and wife, and lived happily, or not so, ever after. Nor
+was it needful that the rite should be only thus. If a maid lost her
+heart to a youth, the laid hands could be hers, and the shoulders his,
+and if he turned not away from her, if thrice he lifted her from the
+ground, this too was wedlock.
+
+If there were no good cave for them to take as their own, bride and
+bridegroom built them a hut of clay and wattles. Such huts were already
+numerous, dotted about in all directions. Elder folk thought them very
+ugly, and said that they spoilt the landscape. Yet what was to be done?
+It is well that a people should multiply. Though these homelanders now
+deemed themselves very many indeed (their number, you see, being so
+much higher than they ever could count up to, even incorrectly), yet
+not even the eldest of them denied that there was plenty of room and
+plenty of food for more. And plenty of employment, you ask? They did
+not worry about that. The more babies there were, the more children
+and grown folk would there be anon to take turns in minding the ample
+flocks and herds, and the more leisure for all to walk or sit around,
+talking about the weather or about one another. They made no fetish of
+employment.
+
+I have said that they were not bad. Had you heard them talked about by
+one another, you might rather doubt this estimate. You would have heard
+little good of any one. No family seemed to approve of its neighbours.
+Even between brothers and sisters mutual trust was rare. Even husbands
+and wives bickered. To strangers, as you have seen, these people could
+be charming. I do not say they were ever violent among themselves. That
+was not their way. But they lacked kindness.
+
+Happiness is said to beget kindness. Were these people not happy? They
+deemed themselves so. Nay, there was to come a time when, looking
+back, they felt that they had been marvellously happy. This time began
+on the day in whose dawn smoke was seen rising from Hay Hill.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The title of my tale has enabled you to guess the source of that smoke:
+the nostrils of some dreadful dragon. But had you been the little girl
+named Thia, by whom first that smoke was seen, you would not have come
+upon the truth so quickly.
+
+Thia had slept out under the stars, and, waking as they faded, had
+risen, brushed the dew from her arms and legs, shaken it off her little
+goatskin tunic, and gone with no glance around or upward to look for
+mushrooms. Presently, as there seemed to be no mushrooms this morning
+anywhere, she let her eyes rove from the ground (ground that is now
+Lord Lansdowne’s courtyard) and, looking up, saw the thick smoke above
+the hill. She saw that it came from the cave where dwelt the widow Gra
+with her four children. How could Gra, how could any one, want a fire
+just now? Thia’s dark eyes filled with wonder. On wintry nights it was
+proper that there should be a fire at the mouth of every cave, proper
+that in wintry dawns these should still be smouldering. But--such smoke
+as this on such a morning! Heavier, thicker smoke than Thia had ever
+seen in all the ten years of her existence! Of course fire was a god.
+But surely he would not have us worship him to-day? Why then had Gra
+lit him? Thia gave it up, and moved away with eyes downcast in renewed
+hope of mushrooms.
+
+She had not gone far before she stared back again, hearing a piteous
+shrill scream from the hill. She saw a little boy flying headlong down
+the slope--Thol, the little red-haired boy who lived in the other cave
+up there. Thol slipped, tumbled head over heels, rolled, picked himself
+up, saw Thia, and rushed weeping towards her.
+
+‘What ails you, O child?’ asked Thia, than whom Thol was indeed a year
+younger and much smaller.
+
+‘O!’ was all that the child vouchsafed between his sobs, ‘O!’
+
+Thia thought ill of tears. Scorn for Thol fought the maternal instinct
+in her. But scorn had the worst of it. She put her arms about Thol.
+Quaveringly he told her what he had just seen, and what he believed it
+to be, and how it lay there asleep, with just its head and tail outside
+Gra’s cave, snoring. Then he broke down utterly. Thia looked at the
+hill. Maternal instinct was now worsted by wonder and curiosity and the
+desire to be very brave--to show how much braver than boys girls are.
+Thia went to the hill, shaking off Thol’s wild clutches and leaving him
+behind. Thia went up the hill quickly but warily, on tiptoe, wide-eyed,
+with her tongue out upon her underlip. She took a sidelong course, and
+she noticed a sort of black path through the grass, winding from the
+mouth of Gra’s cave, down one side of the hill, and away, away till it
+was lost in the white mists over the marshes. She climbed nearly level
+with the cave’s mouth, and then, peering through a bush which hid her,
+saw what lay behind the veil of smoke.
+
+Much worse the sleeping thing was than she had feared it would be, much
+huger and more hideous. Its face was as long as a man’s body, and lay
+flat out along the ground. Had Thia ever seen a crocodile’s face, that
+is of what she would have been reminded--a crocodile, but with great
+pricked-up ears, and snuffling forth fiery murk in deep, rhythmic,
+luxurious exhalations. The tip of the creature’s tail, sticking out
+from the further side of the cave’s mouth, looked to her very like an
+arrow-head of flint--green flint! She could awfully imagine the rest of
+the beast, curled around in the wide deep cave. And she shuddered with
+a great hatred, and tears started to her eyes, as she thought of Gra
+and of those others.
+
+When she reached the valley, it was clear to Thol that she had been
+crying. And she, resenting his scrutiny, made haste to say, ‘I wept for
+Gra and for her children; but you, O child, because you are a coward.’
+
+At these words the boy made within him a great resolve. This was, that
+he would slay the dragon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How? He had not thought of that. When? Not to-day, he felt, nor
+to-morrow. But some day, somehow. He knew himself to be small, even for
+his age, and the dragon big for whatever its age might be. He knew he
+was not very clever; he was sure the dragon was very clever indeed. So
+he said nothing to Thia of his great resolve that she should be sorry.
+
+Meanwhile, the sun had risen over the hills beyond the water, and the
+birds been interrupted in their songs by the bleating of penned sheep.
+This sound recalled Thol from his dreams of future glory.
+
+For he was a shepherd’s lad. It was the custom that children, as they
+ceased to toddle, should begin to join in whatever work their parents
+were by way of doing for the common good. Indeed it was felt that work
+was especially a thing for the young. Thol had no parents to help;
+for his mother had died in giving him birth; and one day, when he was
+but seven years old, his father, who was a shepherd, had been attacked
+and killed by an angry ram. In the sleek safe homeland this death
+by violence had made a very painful impression. There was a general
+desire to hush it up, to forget it. Thol was a reminder of it. Thol was
+ignored, as much as possible. He was allowed to have the cave that had
+been his father’s, but even the widow Gra, in the cave so near to his,
+disregarded him, and forbade her children to play with him. However,
+there dwelt hard by in the valley a certain shepherd, named Brud, and
+he, being childless, saw use for Thol as helping-boy, and to that use
+put him. Every morning, it was Thol’s first duty to wake his master. It
+was easy for Thol himself to wake early, for his cave faced eastwards.
+To-day in his great excitement about the dragon he had forgotten his
+duty to Brud. He went running now to perform it.
+
+Brud and his dog, awakened, came out and listened to Thol’s tale.
+Truthfulness was regarded by all the homelanders as a very important
+thing, especially for the young. Brud took his staff, and ‘Now, O
+Thol,’ he said, ‘will I beat you for saying the thing that is not.’ But
+the boy protested that there was indeed a dragon in Gra’s cave; so Brud
+said sagely, ‘Choose then one of two things: either to run hence into
+Gra’s cave, or to be beaten.’ Thol so unhesitatingly chose to be beaten
+that it was clear he did believe his own story. Thia, moreover, came
+running up to say that there truly was a dragon. So Brud did not beat
+Thol very much, and went away with his dog towards the hill, curious to
+know what really was amiss up there.
+
+Perhaps Thia was already sorry she had called Thol a coward, for,
+though he was now crying again loudly, she did but try to comfort
+him. His response to her effort was not worthy of a future hero: he
+complained through his tears that she had not been beaten, too, for
+saying there was a dragon. Thia’s eyes flashed fiercely. She told Thol
+he was ugly and puny and freckle-faced, and that nobody loved him. All
+this was true, and it came with the more crushing force from pretty
+Thia, whom every one petted.
+
+No one ever made Thia work, though she was strong and agile, and did
+wondrously well whatever task she might do for the fun of it. She
+could milk a goat, or light a fire, or drive a flock of geese, or find
+mushrooms if there were any, as quickly and surely as though she had
+practised hard for years. But the homelanders preferred to see her go
+flitting freely all the day long, dancing and carolling, with flowers
+in her hair.
+
+Thia’s hair was as dark as her eyes. Thia was no daughter of the
+homeland. She was the daughter of two wanderers who, seven years ago,
+had sojourned here for a few days. Their child had then attained just
+that age which was always a crisis in the lives of wanderers’ children:
+she had grown enough to be heavy in her parents’ arms, and not enough
+to foot it beside them. So they had left her here, promising the
+homelanders that in time they would come back for her; and she, who had
+had no home, had one now. Although (a relic, this, of primitive days)
+no homelander ever on any account went near to the mouth of another’s
+dwelling, Thia would go near and go in, and be always welcome. The
+homelanders seldom praised one another’s children; but about Thia there
+was no cause for jealousy: they all praised her strange beauty, her
+fearless and bright ways. And withal she was very good. You must not
+blame her for lack of filial sense. How should she love parents whom
+she did not remember? She was full of love for the homelanders; and
+naturally she hated the thought they hated: that some day two wanderers
+might come and whisk her away.[A] She loved this people and this place
+the more deeply perhaps because she was not of them. Forget the harsh
+things she has just said to Thol. He surely was to blame. And belike
+she would even have begged his pardon had she not been preoccupied with
+thoughts for the whole homeland, with great fears of what the dreadful
+dragon might be going to do when he woke up.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And a wonder it was that he did not wake forthwith, so loud a bellow
+of terror did Brud and his dog utter at the glimpse they had of him.
+The glimpse sufficed them: both bounded to the foot of the hill with
+incredible speed, still howling. From the mouths of caves and huts
+people darted and stood agape. Responsive sheep, goats, geese, what
+not, made great noises of their own. Brud stood waving his arms wildly
+towards the hill. People stared from him to the column of smoke, and
+from it to him. They were still heavy with sleep. Unusual behaviour at
+any time annoyed them; they deeply resented behaviour so unusual as
+this so early in the morning. Little by little, disapproval merged into
+anxiety. Brud became the centre of a circle. But he did not radiate
+conviction. A dragon? A dragon in the homeland? Brud must be mad!
+
+Brud called Thol to witness. Thol, afraid that if he told the truth he
+would be beaten by everybody but Brud, said nothing. Favourite Thia was
+not so reticent. She described clearly the dragon’s head and tail and
+the black path through the grass. Something like panic passed around
+the circle; not actual panic, for--surely Thia’s bright dark eyes had
+deceived her. A dragon was one thing, the homeland another: there
+couldn’t possibly be a dragon in the homeland. Mainly that they might
+set Thia’s mind at rest, a few people went to reconnoitre. Presently,
+with palsied lips, they were admitting that there could be, and was, a
+dragon in the homeland.
+
+They ran stuttering the news in all directions, ran knowing it to be
+true, yet themselves hardly believing it, ran hoping others would
+investigate it and prove it a baseless rumour, ran gibbering it to
+the very confines of the homeland. Slowly, incredulously, people from
+all quarters made their way to the place where so many were already
+gathered. The whole population was at length concentrated in what is
+Berkeley Square. Up the sky the sun climbed steadily. Surely, thought
+the homelanders, a good sign? This god of theirs could not look so calm
+and bright if there were really a dragon among his chosen people? Bold
+adventurers went scouting hopefully up the hill, only to return with
+horror in their eyes, and with the same old awful report upon their
+lips. Before noon the whole throng was convinced. Eld is notoriously
+irreceptive of new ideas; but even the oldest inhabitant stood
+convinced now.
+
+Silence reigned, broken only by the bleatings, cacklings, quackings, of
+animals unreleased from their pens or coops, far and near. Up, straight
+up through the windless air went the column of smoke steadfastly,
+horribly, up higher than the eyes of the homelanders could follow it.
+
+What was to be done? Could nothing be done? Could not some one, at any
+rate, say something? People who did not know each other, or had for
+years not been on speaking terms, found themselves eagerly conversing,
+in face of the common peril. Solemn parties were formed to go and view
+the dragon’s track, its odious scorched track from the marshes. People
+remembered having been told by wanderers that when a dragon swam a
+river he held high his head, lest his flames should be quenched. The
+river that had been crossed last night by this monster was a great god.
+Why had he not drowned the monster? Well, fire was a great god also,
+and he deigned to dwell in dragons. One god would not destroy another.
+But again, would even a small god deign to dwell in a dragon? The
+homelanders revised their theology. Fire was not a god at all.
+
+Then, why, asked some, had the river not done his duty? The more rigid
+logicians answered that neither was the river a god. But this doctrine
+was not well received. People felt they had gone quite far enough as it
+was. Besides, now was a time rather for action than for thought. Some
+of those who were skilled in hunting went to fetch their arrows and
+spears, formed a sort of army, and marched round and round the lower
+slopes of the hill in readiness to withstand and slay the dragon so
+soon as he should come down into the open. At first this had a cheering
+and heartening effect (on all but Thol, whose personal aspiration
+you remember). But soon there recurred to the minds of many, and were
+repeated broadcast, other words that had been spoken by wanderers. ‘So
+hard,’ had said one, ‘are the scales of a crawling dragon that no spear
+can prick him, howsoever sharp and heavy and strongly hurled.’ And
+another had grimly said, ‘Young is that dragon who is not older than
+the oldest man.’ And another, ‘A crawling dragon is not baulked but by
+the swiftness of men’s heels.’
+
+All this was most depressing. Confidence in the spearmen was badly
+shaken. The applause for them whenever they passed by was quieter,
+betokening rather pity than hope. Nay, there were people who now
+deprecated any attempt to kill the dragon. The dragon, they argued,
+must not be angered. If he were not mistreated he might do no harm. He
+had a right to exist. He had visited Gra’s cave in a friendly spirit,
+but Gra had tried to mistreat him, and the result should be a lesson to
+them all.
+
+Others said, more acceptably, ‘Let us think not of the dragon. What the
+spearmen can do, that will they do. Let this day be as other days, and
+each man to the task that is his.’ Brud was one of those who hurried
+away gladly. Nor was Thol loth to follow. The chance that the dragon
+might come out in his absence did not worry a boy so unprepared to-day
+for single combat; and if other hands than his were to succeed in
+slaying the dragon, he would liefer not have the bitterness of looking
+on.
+
+Thia also detached herself from the throng. Many voices of men and
+women and children called after her, bidding her stay. ‘I would find me
+some task,’ she answered.
+
+‘O Thia,’ said one, ‘find only flowers for your hair. And sing to us,
+dance for us. Let this day be as other days.’ And so pleaded many
+voices.
+
+But Thia answered them, ‘My heart is too sad. We are all in peril.
+For myself I am not afraid. But how should I dance, who love you? Not
+again, O dear ones, shall I dance, until the dragon be slain or gone
+back across the water. Neither shall I put flowers in my hair nor
+sing.’
+
+She went her way, and was presently guiding a flock of geese to a pond
+that does not exist now.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She sat watching the geese gravely, fondly, as they swam and dived and
+cackled. She was filled with a sense of duty to them. They too were
+homelanders and dear ones. She wished that all the others could be so
+unknowing and so happy.
+
+A breeze sprang up, swaying the column of smoke and driving it across
+the valley, on which it cast a long, wide, dark shadow.
+
+Thia felt very old. She remembered a happy and careless child who
+woke--how long ago!--and went looking for mushrooms. And this memory
+gave her another feeling. You see, she had eaten nothing all day.
+
+Near the pond was a cherry-tree. She looked at it. She tried not to.
+This was no day for eating. The sight of the red cherries jarred on
+her. They were so very red. She went to the tree unwillingly. She
+hoped no one would see her. In your impatience at the general slowness
+of man’s evolution, you will be glad to learn that Thia, climbing that
+tree and swinging among the branches, had notably more of assurance and
+nimble ease than any modern child would have in like case. It was only
+her mind that misgave her.
+
+Ashamed of herself, ashamed of feeling so much younger and stronger
+now, she dropped to the ground and wondered how she was to atone. She
+chose the obvious course. She ran around the homeland urging every one
+to eat something. All were grateful for the suggestion. The length of
+their fast is the measure of the shock they had received that day,
+and of the strain imposed on them. Eating had ever been a thing they
+excelled in. Most of them were far too fat. Thia’s suggestion was acted
+on with all speed. Great quantities of cold meat were consumed. And
+this was well. The night in store was to make special demands on the
+nerves of the homelanders.
+
+As the sun drew near down to the west, the breeze dropped with it,
+and the smoke was again an upright column, reddened now by the sun.
+Later, while afterglow faded into twilight, to some of the homelanders
+it seemed that the base of the column was less steady, was moving.
+They were right. The time of their testing was at hand. The dragon was
+coming down the hill.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The spearmen opened out their ranks quickly and hovered in skirmishing
+order. The dragon’s pace was no quicker than that of a man strolling.
+His gait was at once ponderous and sinuous. The great body rocked on
+the four thick leglets that moved in a somehow light and stealthy
+fashion. They ended, these leglets, in webbed feet with talons. The
+long neck was craned straight forward, flush with the ground, but the
+tail, which was longer still, swung its barbed tip slowly from side to
+side, and sometimes rose, threshing the air. Neck, body and tail were
+surmounted by a ridge of upstanding spurs. In fact, the dragon was
+just what I have called him: dreadful.
+
+Spears flew in the twilight. Ringing noises testified that many of them
+hit the mark. They rang as they glanced off the scales that completely
+sheathed the brute, who, now and again, coiled his neck round to have
+a look at them, as though they rather interested and amused him. One
+of them struck him full on the brow (if brow it can be called) without
+giving him an instant’s pause.
+
+Anon, however, he halted, rearing his neck straight up, turning his
+head slowly this way and that, and seemed to take, between his great
+puffs of fiery smoke, a general survey of the valley. Twilight was not
+fading into darkness, for a young moon rode the sky, preserving a good
+view for, and of, the dragon. Most of the homelanders had with one
+accord retired to the further side of the valley, across the dividing
+stream. Only the spearmen remained on the dragon’s side, and some sheep
+that were in a fold there. One of the spearmen, taking aim, ventured
+rather near to the dragon--so near that the dragon’s neck, shooting
+down, all but covered the distance. The clash of the dragon’s jaws
+resounded. The spearman had escaped only by a hair’s breadth. The
+homelanders made a faint noise, something between a sigh and a groan.
+
+The dragon looked at them for a long time. He seemed to be in no hurry.
+He glanced at the moon, as though saying, ‘The night is young.’ He
+glanced at the sheepfold and slowly went to it. Wanderers had often
+said of dragons that they devoured no kind of beast in any land that
+had human creatures in it. What would this dragon do? The huddled
+sheep bleated piteously at him. He reared his neck high and examined
+them from that altitude. Suddenly a swoop and a clash. The neck was
+instantly erect again, with a ripple down it. The head turned slowly
+towards the homelanders, then slowly away again. The mind was seemingly
+divided. There was a pause. This ended in another swoop, clash, recoil
+and ripple. Another dubious pause; and now, neck to ground, the dragon
+headed amain for the homelanders.
+
+They drew back, they scattered. Some rushed they knew not whither for
+refuge, wailing wildly; others swarmed up the trunks of high trees
+(swiftlier, yes, than we could). Across the stream stepped the dragon
+with a sort of cumbrous daintiness, and straightway, at his full speed,
+which was that of a man walking quickly, gave chase. If you care for
+the topographical side of history, you should walk out of Berkeley
+Square by way of Charles Street, into Curzon Street, past Chesterfield
+House, up Park Lane, along Oxford Street, down South Molton Street and
+back into Berkeley Square by way of Bruton Street. This, roughly, was
+the dragon’s line of route. He did not go exactly straight along it.
+He often swerved and zigzagged; and he made in the course of the night
+many long pauses. He would thrust his head into the mouth of some cave
+or hut, on the chance that some one had been so foolish as to hide
+there; or he would crane his neck up among the lower branches of a tall
+tree, scorching these with his breath, and peering up into the higher
+branches, where refugees might or might not be; or he would just
+stay prone somewhere, doing nothing. For the rest, he pursued whom he
+saw. High speed he never achieved; but he had cunning, and had power
+to bewilder with fear. Before the night was out he was back again in
+his cave upon the hill. And the sleepless homelanders, forgathering
+in the dawn to hear and tell what things had befallen, gradually knew
+themselves to be the fewer by five souls.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is often said that no ills are so hard to suffer as to anticipate.
+I do not know that this is true. But it does seem to be a fact that
+people comport themselves better under the incidence of an ill
+than under the menace of it; better also in their fear of an ill’s
+recurrence than when the ill is first feared. Some of the homelanders,
+you will have felt, had been rather ridiculous on the first day of
+the dragon’s presence among them. They had not been so in the watches
+of the night. Even Brud and his dog had shown signs of courage and
+endurance. Even Thol had not cried much. Thia had behaved perfectly.
+But this is no more than you would expect of Thia. The point is that
+after their panic at the dragon’s first quick onset, the generality of
+the homelanders had behaved well. And now, haggard though they were in
+the dawn, wan, dishevelled, they were not without a certain collective
+dignity.
+
+When everything had been told and heard, they stood for a while in
+silent mourning. The sun rose from the hills over the water, and with
+a common impulse they knelt to this great god, beseeching him that
+he would straightway call the dragon back beyond those hills, never
+to return. Then they looked up at the cave. To-day the dragon was
+wholly inside, his smoke rolling up from within the cave’s mouth. Long
+looked the homelanders for that glimmer of nether fire which would
+show that he was indeed moving forth. There was nothing for them to
+see but the black smoke. ‘Peradventure,’ said one, ‘the sun is not a
+god.’ ‘Nay,’ said another, ‘rather may it be that he is so great a god
+that we cannot know his purposes, nor he be turned aside from them
+by our small woes.’ This was accounted a strange but a wise saying.
+‘Nevertheless,’ said the sayer, ‘it is well that we should ask help of
+him in woes that to us are not small.’ So again the homelanders prayed,
+and though their prayer was still unanswered they felt themselves
+somehow strengthened.
+
+It was agreed that they should disperse to their dwellings, eat, and
+presently reassemble in formal council.
+
+And here I should mention Shib; for he was destined to be important in
+this council, though he was but a youth, and on his cheeks and chin the
+down had but begun to lengthen. I may as well also mention Veo, his
+brother, elder than him by one year. They were the sons of Oc and Loga,
+with whom they lived in a cave near the valley. Veo had large eyes
+which seemed to see nothing, but saw much. Shib had small eyes which
+seemed to see much, and saw it. Shib’s parents thought him very clever,
+as indeed he was. They thought Veo a fool; but Mr. Roger Fry, had he
+seen the mural drawings in their cave, would have assured them that he
+was a master.
+
+Said Veo to Shib, as they followed their parents to the cave, ‘Though I
+prayed that he might not, I am glad that the dragon abides with us. His
+smoke is as the trunk of a great tree whose branches are the sky. When
+he comes crawling down the hill he is more beautiful than Thia dancing.’
+
+Shib’s ideas about beauty were academic. Thia dancing, with a rose-bush
+on one side of her and a sunset on the other, was beautiful. The dragon
+was ugly. But Shib was not going to waste breath in argument with his
+absurd brother. What mattered was not that the dragon was ugly, but
+that the dragon was a public nuisance, to be abated if it could not be
+suppressed. The spearmen had failed to suppress it, and would continue
+to fail. But Shib thought he saw a way to abatement. He had carefully
+watched throughout the night the dragon’s demeanour. He had noted how,
+despite so many wanderers’ clear testimony as to the taste of all
+dragons, this creature had seemed to palter in choice between the
+penned sheep near to him and the mobile people across the stream; noted
+that despite the great talons on his feet he did not attempt to climb
+any of the trees; noted the long rests he took here and there. On these
+observations Shib had formed a theory, and on this theory a scheme. And
+during the family meal in the cave he recited the speech he was going
+to make at the council. His parents were filled with admiration. Veo,
+however, did not listen to a word. Nor did he even attend the council.
+He stayed in the cave, making with a charred stick, on all vacant
+spaces, stark but spirited pictures of the dragon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I will not report in even an abridged form the early proceedings of the
+council. For they were tedious. The speakers were many, halting, and
+not to the point. Shib, when his chance at length came, shone. He had
+a dry, unattractive manner; but he had something to say, he said it
+clearly and tersely, and so he held his audience.
+
+Having stated the facts he had noted, he claimed no certainty for the
+deduction he had made from them. He did not say, ‘Know then surely, O
+homelanders, that this is a slothful dragon.’ Nor, for the matter of
+that, did he say he had furnished a working hypothesis, or a hypothesis
+that squared with the known facts, or a hypothesis that held the field.
+Such phrases, alas, were impossible in the simple and barbarous tongue
+of the homelanders. But ‘May it not be,’ Shib did say, ‘that this is
+a slothful dragon?’ There was a murmur of meditative assent. ‘Hearken
+then,’ said Shib, ‘to my counsel. Let the spearmen go slay two deer.
+Let the shepherds go slay two sheep, and the goat-herds two goats. Also
+let there be slain three geese and as many ducks. Or ever the sun leave
+us, and the dragon wake from his sleep, let us take all these up and
+lay them at the mouth of the cave that was Gra’s cave. Thus it may be
+that this night shall not be as the last was, but we all asleep and
+safe. And if so it betide us, let us make to the dragon other such
+offerings to-morrow, and on all days that are to come.’
+
+There was prompt and unanimous agreement that this plan should be
+tried. The spearmen went hunting. Presently they returned with a buck
+and a roe. By this time the other animals prescribed had been slain
+in due number. It remained that the feast should be borne noiselessly
+up the hill and spread before the slumbering dragon. The homelanders
+surprised one another, surprised even themselves, by their zeal for a
+share of this task. Why should any one of them be wanting to do work
+that others could do? and willing to take a risk that others would
+take? Really they did not know. It was a strange foible. But there
+it was. A child can carry the largest of ducks; but as many as four
+men were lending a hand in porterage of a duck to-day. Not one of the
+porters enjoyed this work. But somehow they all wanted to do it, and
+did it with energy and good humour.
+
+Very soon, up yonder on the flat shelf of ground in front of the cave’s
+mouth, lay temptingly ranged in a semicircular pattern two goats,
+three ducks, two deer, three geese and two sheep. All had been done
+that was to be done. The homelanders suddenly began to feel the effects
+of their sleepless night. They would have denied that they were sleepy,
+but they felt a desire to lie down and think. The valley soon had a
+coverlet of sleeping figures, prone and supine. But, as you know, the
+mind has a way of waking us when it should; and the homelanders were
+all wide awake when the shadows began to lengthen.
+
+Very still the air was; and very still stood those men and women and
+children, on the other side of the dividing stream. The sun, setting
+red behind them, sent their shadows across the stream, on and on
+slowly, to the very foot of the hill up to which they were so intently
+looking. The column of smoke, little by little, lost its flush. But
+anon it showed fitful glimpses of a brighter red at the base of it,
+making known that the dragon’s head was not inside the cave. And
+now it seemed to the homelanders, in these long moments, that their
+hearts ceased beating, and all hope died in them. Suddenly--clash! the
+dragon’s jaws echoed all over the valley; and then what silence!
+
+Through the veil of smoke, dimly, it was seen that the red glow rose,
+paused, fell--clash! again.
+
+Twelve was a number that the homelanders could count up to quite
+correctly. Yet even after the twelfth clash they stood silent and
+still. Not till the red glow faded away into the cave did they feel
+sure that to-night all was well with them.
+
+Then indeed a great deep sigh went up from the throng. There were
+people who laughed for joy; others who wept for the same reason.
+None was happier than Thia. She was on the very point of singing and
+dancing, but remembered her promise, and the exact wording of it, just
+in time. In all the valley there was but one person whose heart did not
+rejoice. This was Veo. He had come out late in the afternoon, to await,
+impatiently, the dragon’s reappearance. He had particularly wanted to
+study the action of the hind-legs, which he felt he had not caught
+rightly. Besides, he had wanted to see the whole magnificent creature
+again, just for the sight of it. Veo was very angry. Nobody, however,
+heeded him. Everybody heeded the more practical brother. It was a great
+evening for Oc and Loga. They were sorry there was a dragon in the
+homeland, but even more (for parents will be parents) were they proud
+of their boy’s success. The feelings of Thol, too, were not unmixed.
+Though none of the homelanders, except Thia, had ever shown him any
+kindness, he regretted the dragon, and was very glad that the dragon
+was not coming out to-night; but he was even gladder that the dragon
+had not been slain by the spearmen nor called back across the water by
+the sun. It was true that if either of these things had happened he
+could have gone to sleep comfortably in his own cave, and that he dared
+not sleep there now, and saw no prospect of sleeping there at all until
+he had slain the dragon. But he bethought him of the many empty caves
+on the way down to the marshes. And he moved into that less fashionable
+quarter--sulkily indeed, but without tears, and sustained by a great
+faith in the future.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the morning of next day the homelanders prayed again to the sun that
+he would call the dragon away from them. He did not so. Therefore they
+besought him that he would forbid the dragon to come further than the
+cave’s mouth, and would cause him to be well-pleased with a feast like
+yesterday’s.
+
+Such a feast, in the afternoon, was duly laid at the cave’s mouth; and
+again, when the sun was setting, the dragon did not come down the hill,
+but ate aloft there, and at the twelfth clash drew back his glowing
+jaws into the cave.
+
+Day followed day, each with the same ritual and result.
+
+Shib did not join in the prayers. He regarded them as inefficacious,
+and also as rather a slight to himself. The homelanders, be it said,
+intended no slight. They thought Shib wonderfully clever, and were
+most grateful to him; but it never occurred to them to rank him among
+gods.
+
+Veo always prayed heartily that the dragon should be called away
+forthwith. He wanted to see the dragon by daylight. But he did not pray
+that the dragon should not come forth in the evening. Better a twilit
+dragon than none at all.
+
+Little Thol, though he prayed earnestly enough that the dragon should
+stay at home by night, never prayed for him to leave the homeland. He
+prayed that he himself might grow up very quickly, and be very big and
+very strong and very clever and very brave.
+
+For the rest, the homelanders were all orthodox in their devotions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The young moon had grown old, had dwindled, and disappeared. The sound
+of the clashed jaws ceased to be a novelty. The vesperal gatherings in
+the valley became smaller. The great column of smoke, by day and by
+night, was for the homelanders a grim reminder of what had happened,
+and of what would happen again if once they failed to fulfil the needs
+of their uninvited guest. They were resolved that they would not fail.
+In this resolution they had a sombre sense of security. But there came,
+before the leaves of the trees were yellow, an evening when the dragon
+left untasted the feast spread for him, and crawled down the hill. He
+was half-way down before any one noticed his coming. And on that night,
+a longer night than the other, he made a wider journey around the
+homeland, and took a heavier toll of lives.
+
+Thenceforth always, at sunset, guards were posted to watch the hill and
+to give, if need were, the alarm. Nor did even this measure suffice. In
+the dawn of a day in winter, when snow was lying thick on the homeland,
+a goat-herd observed with wonder a wide pathway through the snow from
+the dragon’s cave; and presently he saw afar on the level ground the
+dragon himself, with his head inside the mouth of a lonely hut that
+was the home of a young man recently wedded. From the hut’s mouth
+crept forth clouds of smoke, and, as the dragon withdrew his head, the
+goat-herd, finding voice, raised such a cry as instantly woke many
+sleepers. That day lived long in the memory of the homelanders. The
+dragon was very active. He did not plod through the snow. He walked
+at his full speed upon the ground, the snow melting before him at the
+approach of his fiery breath. It was the homelanders that plodded. Some
+of them stumbled head foremost into snowdrifts and did not escape their
+pursuer. There was nothing slothful in the dragon’s conduct that day.
+Hour after hour in the keen frosty air he went his way, and not before
+nightfall did he go home.
+
+Thus was inaugurated what we may call the Time of Greater Stress. No
+one could know at what hour of night or day the dragon might again raid
+the homeland. Relays of guards had to watch the hill always. No one,
+lying down to sleep, knew that the dragon might not forthcome before
+sunrise; no one, throughout the day, knew that the brute might not
+be forthcoming at any moment. True, he forthcame seldom. The daily
+offerings of slain beasts and birds sufficed him, mostly. But he was
+never to be depended on--never.
+
+Shib’s name somewhat fell in the general esteem. Nor was it raised
+again by the execution of a scheme that he conceived. The roe and buck
+stuffed with poisonous herbs were swallowed by the dragon duly, but
+the column of smoke from the cave’s mouth did not cease that evening,
+as had been hoped. And on the following afternoon--a sign that the
+stratagem had not been unnoticed--one of the men who were placing the
+food in front of the cave perished miserably in the dragon’s jaws.
+
+Other devices of Shib’s failed likewise. The homelanders had to accept
+the dragon as a permanent factor in their lives. Year by year, night
+and day, rose the sinister column of smoke, dense, incessant. Happy
+those tiny children who knew not what a homeland without a dragon was
+like! So, at least, thought the elders.
+
+And yet, were these elders so much less happy than they had erst been?
+Were they not--could they but have known it--happier? Did not the
+danger in which they lived make them more appreciative of life? Surely
+they had a zest that in the halcyon days was not theirs? Certainly they
+were quicker-witted. They spoke less slowly, their eyes were brighter,
+all their limbs nimbler. Perhaps this was partly because they ate less
+meat. The dragon’s diet made it necessary that they should somewhat
+restrict their own, all the year round. The dragon, without knowing it,
+was a good physician to them.
+
+Without being a moralist or a preacher, he had also improved their
+characters. Quarrels had become rare. Ill-natured gossip was frowned
+on. Suspicions throve not. Manners had unstiffened. The homelanders
+now liked one another. They had been drawn charmingly together in
+brotherhood and sisterhood. You would have been surprised at the change
+in them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But for his bright red hair, perhaps you would not have recognised Thol
+at all. He was a great gawky youth now. Spiritually, however, he had
+changed little. He was still intent on slaying the dragon.
+
+In the preceding years he had thought of little else than this, and as
+he never had said a word about it he was not accounted good company.
+Nor had he any desire to shine--in any light but that of a hero. The
+homelanders would have been cordial enough to him, throughout those
+years, if he had wished them to be so. But he never was able to forget
+how cold and unkind they had been to him in his early childhood. It was
+not for their sake that he had so constantly nursed and brooded over
+his great wish. It was for his own sake only.
+
+An unsympathetic character? Stay!--let me tell you that since the dawn
+of his adolescence another sake had come in to join his own: Thia’s
+sake.
+
+From the moment when she, in childhood, had called him a coward, it
+always had been Thia especially that he wished to impress. But in
+recent times his feeling had changed. How should such a lout as he ever
+hope to impress Thia, who was a goddess? Thol hoped only to make Thia
+happy, to see her go dancing and singing once more, with flowers in her
+hair. Thol did not even dare hope that Thia would thank him. Thol was
+not an unsympathetic character at all.
+
+As for Thia, she was more fascinating than ever. Do not be misled by
+her seeming to Thol a goddess. Remember that the homelanders worshipped
+cherry-trees and rain and fire and running water and all such things.
+There was nothing of the statuesque Hellenic ideal about Thia. She had
+not grown tall, she was as lissom and almost as slight as ever; and
+her alien dark hair had not lost its wildness: on windy days it flew
+out far behind her, like a thunder cloud, and on calm days hid her as
+in a bush. She had never changed the task that she chose on the day of
+the dragon’s advent. She was still a goose-girl. But perhaps she was
+conscious now that the waddling gait of her geese made the grace of her
+own gait the lovelier by its contrast. Certainly she was familiar with
+her face. She had often leaned over clear pools to study it--to see
+what the homelanders saw in it. She was very glad of her own charms
+because they were so dear to all those beloved people. But sometimes
+her charms also saddened her. She had had many suitors--youths of her
+own age, and elder men too. Even Veo, thinking her almost as beautiful
+as the dragon, had laid his hands upon her shoulders, in the ritual
+mode. Even the intellectual Shib had done so. And even from such elders
+as these it was dreadful to turn away. Nor was Thia a girl of merely
+benevolent nature: she had warm desires, and among the younger suitors
+more than one had much pleased her fancy. But stronger than any other
+sentiment in her was her love for the homeland. Not until the dragon
+were slain or were gone away across the waters would Thia be wife of
+any man.
+
+So far as she knew, she had sentenced herself to perpetual maidenhood.
+Even had she been aware of Thol’s inflexible determination, she would
+hardly have become hopeful. Determination is one thing, doing is
+another.
+
+The truth of that old adage sometimes forced itself on poor Thol
+himself, as he sat watching the sheep that he herded near his cave on
+the way to the marshes; and at such time his sadness was so great that
+it affected even his sheep, causing them to look askance at him and
+bleat piteously, and making drearier a neighbourhood that was in itself
+dreary.
+
+But, one day in the eighteenth summer of his years, Thol ceased to
+despond. There came, wet from the river and mossy from the marshes, an
+aged wanderer. He turned his dark eyes on Thol and said with a smile,
+pointing towards the thick smoke on the hill, ‘A dragon is here now?’
+
+‘Yea, O wanderer,’ Thol answered.
+
+‘There was none aforetime,’ said the old man. ‘A dragon was what your
+folk needed.’
+
+‘They need him not. But tell me, O you that have so much wandered, and
+have seen many dragons, tell me how a dragon may be slain!’
+
+‘Mind your sheep, young shepherd. Let the dragon be. Let not your sheep
+mourn you.’
+
+‘They shall not. I shall slay the dragon. Only tell me how! Surely
+there is a way?’
+
+‘It is a way that would lead you into his jaws, O fool, and not hurt
+him. Only through the roof of his mouth can a dragon be pierced and
+wounded. He opens not his jaws save when they are falling upon his
+prey. Do they not fall swiftly, O fool?’
+
+‘O wanderer, yea. But’----
+
+‘Could you deftly spear the roof of that great mouth, O prey, in that
+little time?’
+
+‘Yea, surely, if so the dragon would perish.’
+
+The old man laughed. ‘So would the dragon perish, truly; but so only.
+So would be heard what few ears have heard--the cry that a dragon
+utters as he is slain. But so only.’ And he went his way northward.
+
+From that day on, Thol did not watch his sheep very much. They, on
+the other hand, spent most of their time in watching him. They rather
+thought he was mad, standing in that odd attitude and ever lunging his
+crook up at one of the nodding boughs of that ash tree.
+
+Twice in the course of the autumn the dragon came down the hill; but
+when the watchman sounded the alarm Thol did not go forth to meet him.
+He was not what his flock thought him.
+
+He had now exchanged his crook for a spear--a straight well-seasoned
+sapling of oak, with a long sharp head of flint. With this, day by
+day, hour after hour, he lunged up at the boughs of fruit-trees. His
+flock, deploring what seemed to them mania, could not but admire his
+progressive skill. Rarely did he fail now in piercing whatever plum or
+apple he aimed at.
+
+When winter made bare the branches, it was at the branches that Thol
+aimed his thrusts. His accuracy was unerring now. But he had yet to
+acquire the trick of combining the act of transfixion with the act of
+leaping aside. Else would he perish even in victory.
+
+Spring came. As usual, her first care was to put blossoms along the
+branches of such almond trees as were nearest to the marshes.
+
+The ever side-leaping Thol pricked off any little single blossom that
+he chose.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Spring was still active in the homeland when, one day, a little while
+before sunset, the watchers of the hill blew their horns. There came
+from all quarters the usual concourse of young and old, to watch the
+direction of the dragon and to keep out of it. Down came the familiar
+great beast, the never-ageing dragon, picking his way into the green
+valley. And he saw an unwonted sight there. He saw somebody standing
+quite still on the nearer bank of the stream; a red-haired young
+person, holding a spear. About this young person he formed a theory
+which had long been held by certain sheep.
+
+Little wonder that the homelanders also formed that theory! Little
+wonder that they needed no further proof of it when, deaf to the cries
+of entreaty that they uttered through the evening air, Thol stood his
+ground!
+
+Slowly, as though to give the wretched young lunatic a chance, the
+dragon advanced.
+
+But quickly, very terribly and quickly, when he was within striking
+distance, he reared his neck up. An instant later there rang through
+the valley--there seemed to rend the valley--a single screech, unlike
+anything that its hearers had ever heard.
+
+Those who dared to look saw the vast length of the dragon, neck on
+grass, coiling slowly round. The tip of the tail met the head and
+parted from it. Presently the vast length was straight, motionless.
+
+Yet even of those who had dared look none dared believe that the dragon
+was indeed dead.
+
+But for its death-cry, Thol himself would hardly have believed.
+
+The second firm believer was Thia. Thia, with swift conviction, plucked
+some flowers and put them loosely into her hair. Thia, singing as well
+as though she had never ceased to sing, and dancing as prettily as
+though she had for years been practising her steps, went singing and
+dancing towards the stream. Lightly she lept the stream, and then very
+seriously and quietly walked to the spot where Thol stood. She looked
+up at him, and then, without a word, raised her arms and put her hands
+upon his shoulders. He, who had slain the dragon, trembled.
+
+‘O Thol,’ she said gently, ‘you turn not away from me, but neither do
+you raise me from the ground.’
+
+Then Thol raised Thia thrice from the ground.
+
+And he said, ‘Let our home be the cave that was my father’s.’
+
+Hand in hand, man and wife, they went up the hill, and round to the
+eastern side of its summit. But when they came to the mouth of the old
+cave there, he paused and let go her hand.
+
+‘O Thia,’ he said wonderingly, ‘is it indeed true that you love me?’
+
+‘O Thol,’ she answered, ‘it is most true.’
+
+‘O Thia,’ he said, ‘love me always!’
+
+‘I have long ceased to love you, O Thol,’ she said, five years later,
+in a low voice. But I see that I have outstripped my narrative. I must
+hark back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun had already risen far when Thol and Thia were wakened by a
+continuous great hum as of many voices. When they looked forth and
+down from the mouth of their high home, it seemed to them that all the
+homelanders were there beneath them, gazing up.
+
+And this was indeed so. Earlier in the morning, by force of habit, all
+the homelanders had gone to what we call Berkeley Square, the place
+where for so many years they had daily besought the sun to call the
+dragon away across the waters. There, where lay the great smokeless and
+harmless carcass, was no need for prayers now; and with one accord the
+throng had moved from the western to the eastern foot of the hill, and
+stayed there gazing in reverence up to the home of a god greater than
+the sun.
+
+When at length the god showed himself, there arose from the throng a
+great roar of adoration. The throng went down on its knees to him,
+flung up its arms to him, half-closed its eyes so as not to be blinded
+by the sight of him. His little mortal mate, knowing not that he was a
+god, thinking only that he was a brave man and her own, was astonished
+at the doings of her dear ones. The god himself, sharing her ignorance,
+was deeply embarrassed, and he blushed to the roots of his hair.
+
+‘Laugh, O Thol,’ she whispered to him. ‘It were well for them that you
+should laugh.’ But he never had laughed in all his life, and was much
+too uncomfortable to begin doing so just now. He backed into the cave.
+The religious throng heaved a deep moan of disappointment as he did so.
+Thia urged him to come forth and laugh as she herself was doing. ‘Nay,’
+he said, ‘but do you, whom they love, dance a little for them and sing.
+Then will they go away happy.’
+
+It seemed to Thia that really this was the next best plan, and so,
+still laughing, she turned round and danced and sang with great
+animation and good-will. The audience, however, was cold. It gave her
+its attention, but even this, she began to feel, was not its kind
+attention. Indeed, the audience was jarred. After a while--for Thia’s
+pride forbade her to stop her performance--the audience began to drift
+away.
+
+There were tears in her eyes when she danced back into the cave. But
+these she brushed away, these she forgot instantly in her lover’s
+presence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Love is not all. ‘I must go drive my geese,’ said the bride.
+
+‘And I my sheep,’ said the bridegroom.
+
+‘There is good grass, O Thol, round my geese’s pond. Let your sheep
+graze there always. Thus shall not our work sever us.’
+
+As they went forth, some children were coming up the hill, carrying
+burdens. The burdens were cold roast flesh, dried figs, and a gourd
+of water, sent by some elders as a votive offering to the god. The
+children knelt at sight of the god and then ran shyly away, leaving
+their gifts on the ground. The god and his mate feasted gladly. Then
+they embraced and parted, making tryst at the pond.
+
+When Thia approached the pond, she did not wonder that Thol was already
+there, for sheep go quicker than geese. But--where were his sheep?
+‘Have they all strayed?’ she cried out to him.
+
+He came to meet her, looking rather foolish.
+
+‘O Thia,’ he explained, ‘as I went to the fold, many men and women
+were around it. I asked them what they did there. They knelt and made
+answer, “We were gazing at the sheep that had been the god’s.” When I
+made to unpen the flock, there was a great moaning. There was gnashing
+of teeth, O Thia, and tearing of hair. It was said by all that the god
+must herd sheep nevermore.’
+
+‘And you, beloved, what said you?’
+
+‘I said nothing, O Thia, amid all that wailing. I knew not what to say.’
+
+Thia laughed long but tenderly. ‘And your sheep, beloved, what said
+they?’
+
+‘How should I know?’ asked Thol.
+
+‘And you left them there? Do you not love them?’
+
+‘I have never loved them.’
+
+‘But they were your task?’
+
+‘O Thia, the dragon was my task.’
+
+She stroked his arm. ‘The dragon is dead, O Thol. You have slain the
+dragon, O my brave dear one. That task is done. You must find some
+other. All men must work. Since you loved not your sheep, you shall
+love my geese, and I will teach you to drive them with me.’
+
+‘That,’ said Thol, ‘would not be a man’s work, O Thia.’
+
+‘But they say you are a god! And I think a god may do as he will.’
+
+Her flock had swum out into the pond. She called it back to her, and
+headed it away towards some willows. From one of these she plucked for
+Thol a long twig such as she herself carried, and, having stripped it
+of its leaves, gave it to him and began to teach him her art.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was, as Thia had known there must be, a great concourse of people
+around and about the dragon.
+
+There was a long line of children riding on its back; there were
+infants in arms being urged by their mothers never to forget that they
+had seen it; there were many young men and women trying to rip off
+some of its scales, as reminders; and there were elders exchanging
+reminiscences of its earliest raids and correcting one another on
+various points. And the whole crowd of holiday-makers was so intent
+that the gradual approach of that earnest worker, Thol, was not noticed
+until he came quite near.
+
+Very gradual, very tortuous and irregular, his approach was. Thia,
+just now, was letting him shift for himself, offering no hints at
+all. For the homelanders’ sake, she wished him to be seen at his
+worst. It was ill that they should worship a false god. To her, he was
+something better than a real god. But this was another matter. To the
+homelanders, he ought to seem no more than a man who had done a great
+deed and set a high example. And for his own sake, and so for hers--for
+how could his not be hers?--she wished him to have no more honour than
+was his due. Splendid man though he was, and only a year younger than
+herself, he was yet a child; and children, thought Thia--though she was
+conscious that she herself, for all the petting she had received, was
+rather perfect--are easily spoilt. Altogether, the goose-girl’s motives
+were as pure as her perception was keen. Admirable, too, were her
+tactics; and they should have succeeded. Yet they failed. In the eyes
+of the homelanders the goose-god lost not a jot of his divinity.
+
+No hint of disillusion was in the moans evoked by the sight of him.
+Grief, shame, horror at his condescension, and a deep wrath against the
+whilom darling Thia, were all that was felt by the kneeling and swaying
+crowd.
+
+Thia knew it. She was greatly disappointed. Indeed, she was near to
+shedding tears again. Pride saved her from that. Besides, she was
+angry, and not only angry but amused. And in a clear voice that was
+audible above the collective moaning, ‘Have patience, O homelanders,’
+she cried. ‘He is new to his work. He will grow in skill. These geese
+will find that he is no fool. And it may be that hereafter, if you are
+all very good, I will teach him to sing and dance for you, with flowers
+in his bright red hair.’
+
+Having thus spoken, she ran to overtake her husband, and soon, guiding
+the flock in good order, went her way with him back to the pond.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a general desire that the dragon should not be buried
+anywhere within the confines of the homeland. Shib conceived that if
+the trunks of felled trees were used as rollers the carcass might be
+transported to the swamps and be sunk there. By its vast weight the
+carcass frustrated this scheme. A long deep trench must be dug beside
+it. All the able-bodied men of the homeland offered their services, and
+of course Shib was a most efficient director of the work.
+
+You will be glad to hear that Shib was a more sympathetic character
+than he once was. The public spirit that had always been his was
+unmarred now by vanity and personal ambition. He was a quiet,
+disinterested, indefatigable worker for the common weal, burning always
+with that hard, gem-like flame which Mr. Pater discerned in the breasts
+of our own Civil Servants. He had forgotten, or he remembered without
+bitterness, the time when he was a popular hero. Thol’s great deed was
+a source of genuine pleasure to him. Nay (for he had long ago outgrown
+his callow atheism), he accepted Thol as a god, though he was too
+cautious to rate him higher than the sun.
+
+Thus he was much shocked when Thol came wishing to help in the labour.
+Rising, at Thol’s earnest entreaty, from his knees, he ventured to
+speak firmly to the god--reverently but very firmly pointing out to
+him that the labourers, if their religious feelings were flouted,
+would probably cease work; and he hinted that he himself would have
+to consider whether he could retain his post. So Thol went back to
+the goose-pond and was so much chidden by Thia for his weakness that
+he almost wished she believed him to be a god. Of course he was not a
+god. Of course Thia was right. Still, Shib was known to be a very wise
+man. It was strange that Shib should be mistaken. Inwardly, he could
+not agree with Thia that Shib was a fool. And I think she must have
+suspected him of this reservation, for she looked at him with much
+trouble in her eyes and was for a while silent, and then, fondlingly,
+made him promise that he never would trust any one’s thoughts but hers.
+
+Three days later the great trench was finished; and down into it, by
+leverage of many stakes heftily wielded in unison, was heaved the
+dragon (and there, to this day, deep down under the eastern side of the
+garden and road-way of Berkeley Square, is the dragon’s skeleton--an
+occult memorial of Thol’s deed). Down into the trench, with a great
+thud that for a moment shook the ground, fell Thol’s victim. Presently
+the trench brimmed with earth, and this earth was stamped firm by
+exultant feet, and more earth was added to it and stamped on till only
+a long brown path, that would soon be green and unnoticeable, marked
+the place of sepulture.
+
+The great occasion lacked only the god’s presence. Of course the god
+had been invited. Shib, heading a deputation on the banks of the
+goose-pond, had besought him that he would deign to throw the first
+clod of earth upon the dragon; and he had diplomatically added that
+all the homelanders were hoping that Thia might be induced to sing and
+dance on the grave as soon as it had been filled. But Thia had answered
+that she could not give her husband leave, inasmuch as he had been idle
+at his work that day; he would like very much to come; but it was for
+that very reason that she would not let him: he must be punished. As
+for herself, she too would very much like to come, but she must stay
+and keep him to his work. Thol saying nothing, the deputation had
+then withdrawn, not without many obeisances, which Thia, with as many
+curtseys, roguishly took to herself.
+
+However, even without the light of the god’s countenance on it, the
+festival was a great and glorious one. Perhaps indeed the revellers
+enjoyed themselves more than would have been possible in the glare
+of that awful luminary. The revels lasted throughout the night, and
+throughout the next day, and did not cease even then. Dazed with
+sleepiness and heavy with surfeits of meat, the homelanders continued
+to caper around bonfires and to clap one another on the back; and only
+because they had not the secret of fermented liquor were there no
+regrettable scenes of intoxication. The revels had become a habit. It
+seemed as though they would never cease. But human strength is finite.
+
+Thia would have liked to be in the midst of the great to-do. It was
+well that the homelanders should rejoice. And the homelanders were as
+dear to her as ever, though she had so much offended them for Thol’s
+sake and theirs. Thol’s nature was not social, as hers was; but she
+knew that even he would have liked to have glimpses of the fun. It
+grieved her to keep him aloof with her among the geese. She sang and
+danced round him and petted him and made much of him, all day long.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The autumn was rainy; and the winter was rainy too; and thus the
+brown path over the dragon’s grave vanished even before spring came.
+Green also was the grass that had for so many years been black above
+and around the mouth of the dragon’s cave. Valley and hill smiled as
+blandly at each other as though they had never seen a dragon.
+
+Little by little, likewise, the souls of the homelanders had reverted,
+as we should say, to type. There were no signs now of that mutual
+good-will which had been implanted in them by the common peril and had
+overflowed so wildly at the time when the peril ended. Mistrustfulness
+had revived, and surliness with it, and quickness to take offence,
+and a dull eagerness to retaliate on the offender. The shortcomings of
+others were once more the main preoccupation of the average homelander.
+Next to these, the weather was once more the favourite topic of
+conversation, especially if the weather were bad; but even if it
+were good, the prospect of bad weather was dwelt on with a more than
+sufficient emphasis. Work, of course, had to be done; but as little
+of it was done as might be, and that glumly, and not well. Meals were
+habitually larger than appetites. Eyes were duller, complexions less
+clear, chests narrower, stomachs more obtrusive, arms and legs less
+well-developed, than they had been under the dragon’s auspices. And
+prayers, of course, were not said now.
+
+Thia in her childhood had thought the homelanders perfect; and thus
+after the coming of the dragon she had observed no improvement in
+them. But now, with maturer vision, she did see that they were growing
+less worthy of high esteem. This grieved her. She believed that she
+loved the homelanders as much as ever, she told herself truly enough
+that it was much her own fault that they had ceased to love her. In
+point of fact, their coldness to her, in course of time, cooled her
+feeling for them: she was human. What she did love as much as ever was
+the homeland. What grieved her was that the homeland should have an
+imperfect population.
+
+She talked constantly to Thol about her sorrow. He was not a very apt
+auditor. Being a native of the homeland, he could not see it, as she
+could, from without. It was not to him an idea, as it was to Thia’s
+deep alien eyes. It was just the homeland. As for the homelanders
+themselves, he had never, as you may remember, loved them; but he liked
+them quite well now. He supposed he really was not a god; but it no
+longer embarrassed him to be thought so; indeed it pleased him to be
+thought so. The homelanders no longer knelt when he passed by. He had
+asked them not to, and they reverently obeyed his wish. He supposed
+Thia was right in saying that they were less good than in the days of
+the dragon; but in those days he had hardly known them. He was glad to
+know them better now. His nature had, in fact, become more expansive.
+He wished Thia were not so troubled about the homeland. He wished she
+would think more gently of the homelanders, and think less about them,
+and talk less to him about them.
+
+Sometimes she even tried to enlist his help. ‘To me,’ she would say,
+‘they would not hearken. But you, O Thol, whom in their folly they
+still believe to be a god, could give light to them and shame them back
+to goodness and strength, and so to happiness. I would teach you what
+words to say.’ But Thol, even though he was to be spared the throes of
+composition, would look so blankly wretched that Thia’s evangelical
+ardour was quenched in laughter. He did not know why she was laughing,
+and he hoped it was not at him that she was laughing: after all, he had
+slain the dragon. Nevertheless, her gaiety was a relief to him.
+
+But her ardour was always flaming up again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She had very soon exempted him from that task which failed to cure the
+homelanders of their delusion about him. She agreed that goose-driving
+was not a man’s work. As he did not wish to be a shepherd again, and as
+it was needful for his own good that he should be set to some sort of
+work, she urged him to be a goat-herd. Goats, she said, were less dull
+than sheep; fiercer; more like dragons. So, beside the goose-pond, he
+herded goats; but without the enthusiasm that she had hoped for.
+
+One day, about a year after their marriage, he even suggested that
+he should have a lad to help him. She said, with a curl of the lip,
+that she had not known he was old and feeble. He replied, seriously,
+that he was younger than she; and as for feebleness, he asked her to
+remember that he, not she, had slain the dragon. He then walked away,
+leaving his goats to their own devices, and his wife to hers, and spent
+the rest of the day in company that was more appreciative of him. He
+returned of course before sundown, fearful of a lecture. Thia, who had
+already driven his goats into their pen, did but smile demurely, saying
+that she would always be glad to do his work for him, and that she was
+trustier than any lad.
+
+But, as time went on, her temper was not always so sweet. Indeed, it
+ceased to be sweet. In his steady, rather bovine way, he loved her as
+much as ever; but his love of being with her was less great, and his
+pleasure in the society of others was greater, than of yore. Perhaps
+if Thia had borne a child, she might have been less troubled about
+the welfare of the homelanders. But this diversion and solace was not
+granted. Thia’s maternal instinct had to spend itself on a community
+which she could not help and did not now genuinely love, and on a
+husband who did not understand her simplest thoughts and was moreover
+growing fat. Her disposition suffered under the strain. One day, when
+she was talking to him about the homeland, she paused with sudden
+suspicion and asked him what she had said last; and he could make no
+answer; and she asked him to tell her what he had been thinking about;
+and he said that he had been thinking about his having slain the
+dragon; and she, instead of chiding him tenderly, as she would have
+done in the old days, screamed. She screamed that she would go mad
+if ever again he spoke to her of that old dragon. She flung her arms
+out towards the hills across the waters and said, with no lowering of
+her voice, that every day, out yonder, men were slaying dragons and
+thinking nothing of it, and doing their work, and not growing fat. He
+asked her whether she meant that he himself was growing fat. ‘Yea,’ she
+answered. He said that then indeed she was mad. Away he strode, nor
+did he return at sundown; and it was late in the night before the god
+retired from a cheery party of worshippers and went up to the cave,
+where Thia, faintly visible in the moonlight, lay sleeping, with a look
+of deep disdain on her face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sometimes Thia wondered whether in her childhood the characters and
+ways of the homelanders had been as they were now. She hated to think
+that they had not been perfect in those days; but she reasoned that
+they could not have been: before the coming of the dragon they must
+have been as they were now, and the only difference was that they had
+then loved her. Thus even the memory of her bright careless early years
+was embittered to her.
+
+In point of fact, the homelanders had not been exactly as they now
+were. The sudden cessation of the strain imposed on them by the
+dragon’s presence, and of the comparative hardships also imposed by
+it, had caused a reaction so strong as to restore to them in a rather
+accentuated form what faults had originally been theirs. Human nature
+had grown rather more human than ever. Labour was a less than ever
+alluring thing. Responsibilities had a greater irksomeness. Freedom was
+all. And, as having special measure of vital force, especially were
+youths and maidens intent on making the most of their freedom. Their
+freedom was their religion; and, as every religion needs rites, they
+ritualistically danced. They danced much during the day, and then much
+by moonlight or starlight or firelight, in a grim and purposeful, an
+angular and indeflexible manner, making it very clear that they were
+not to be trifled with.
+
+Thia, when first she saw them engaged thus, had been very glad; she
+imagined that they must be doing something useful. When she realised
+that they were dancing, she drew a deep breath. She remembered how she
+herself had danced--danced thoughtlessly and anyhow, from her heart,
+with every scrap of her body. She blushed at the recollection. She did
+not wonder that the homelanders had resented her dance on the morning
+after her marriage. She wondered that they had encouraged her to dance
+when she was a child. And she felt that there must, after all, be in
+these young people a deep fund of earnestness, auguring well for their
+future.
+
+Time had not confirmed this notion. The young people danced through the
+passing seasons and the passing years with ever greater assiduity and
+solemnity; but other forms of seriousness were not manifested by them.
+Few of them seemed to find time even for falling in love and marrying.
+They all, however, called one another ‘beloved,’ and had a kind of
+mutual good-will which their elders, among themselves, would have done
+well to emulate. And for those elders they had a tolerant feeling which
+ought to have been, yet was not, fully reciprocated.
+
+Thol within five years of the dragon’s death, Thol with his immense
+red beard and his stately deportment, was of course very definitely an
+elder; and still more so was that wife of his, that rather beautiful
+dark woman, Thia, whose face was so set and stern that she looked
+almost as though she--she!--were dancing. Thol was liked by the young
+people. They made much of him. They did not at all object to his being
+rather pompous: after all, he had slain that dragon, and they thought
+it quite natural that their parents should imagine he was a god. They
+liked him to be pompous. They humoured him. They enjoyed drawing him
+out. Among the youths there were several who, in the hours not devoted
+to earnest dancing and cursory guardianship of flocks, made pictures
+upon white stones or upon slabs of chalk. They liked especially to
+make pictures of Thol, because he was so ready to pose for them, and
+because he stood so still for them. They drew in a manner of their
+own, a manner, which made the veins of poor old Veo stand out upon his
+forehead, and moved him to declare that they would die young and would
+die in shame and in agony. Thol, however, was no critic. He was glad to
+be portrayed in any manner. And it much pleased him to have the colour
+of his mane and beard praised constantly by the young artists. He had
+supposed the colour was wrong. Thia had been wont to laugh at it, in
+her laughing days. Thia had never called him beautiful, in her praising
+days. It gladdened him that there were now many young women--Afa, for
+instance, and Ola, and Ispa, and Moa--who called him, to his face,
+‘terribly’ beautiful.
+
+Thol’s face, which Thia had admired for its steadfast look, and later
+had begun to like less for its heavy look, had now a look that was
+rather fatuous. Afa and the others did not at all object to this. They
+liked it; they encouraged it by asking him to dance with them. He did
+not, as they supposed, think that he was too old to dance: he only
+thought that he might not dance well and might lose his power over
+them. He believed that they loved him. How should they not? Thia,
+though she never told him so now, loved him with her whole heart, of
+course, and, for all the harsh words she spoke at times, thought that
+no man was his equal. How should not these much gentler young women not
+have given their hearts to him? He felt that he himself could love one
+of them, if he were not Thia’s husband. They were not beautiful, as
+Thia was; and they were not wise, as she was; but he felt that if he
+had never seen Thia he might love one of them, or even all of them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For lack of a calendar, the homelanders had not the habit of keeping
+anniversaries. They never knew on what day of the year a thing had
+happened--did not even know that there was a year. But they knew the
+four seasons. They remembered that the apple-trees had been in blossom
+when Thol slew the dragon, and that since then the apple-trees had
+blossomed four times. And it seemed good to them that at the close of
+a day when those blossoms were again on those branches, a feast should
+be held in that part of the valley where the great deed had been done.
+Shib, who organised the feast, was anxious that it should be preceded
+by a hymn in praise of the slayer god. He thought this would have a
+good effect on the rising generation. But Thol opposed the idea, and
+it was dropped. Shib had also been anxious that Thia should attend the
+feast, sitting at Thol’s right hand and signifying to the young the
+blessedness of the married state. Thol promised that he would beg her
+to come; and he did so, as a matter of form, frequently. But Thia of
+course did not grace the convivial scene.
+
+It was at a late hour of the moonlit night that Thol, flushed with
+adulation, withdrew from the revels, amidst entreaties that he should
+remain. He was still wearing the chaplet of flowers that Afa had
+woven for him. Afa herself was clinging to one of his arms, Moa to
+the other, as he went round to the eastern spur of the hill; and Ola
+and Ispa and many others were footing around lightly and lingeringly,
+appealingly. It was rather the thought of Thia’s love for him than of
+his for her that withheld him from kissing these attendants before he
+bade them good-night. For his own sake he wished, as he climbed the
+hill, that they would not stand cooing so many farewells up to him so
+loudly. Thia might not understand how true he was to her. He hoped she
+was sleeping. But she was awake. Nor was he reassured by the laughter
+with which, after a moment, she greeted him. She was looking at his
+head. He became suddenly aware that he had not shed that chaplet. He
+snatched it off. She laughed the more, but with no kindness in the
+sound of her laughter.
+
+‘O Thia,’ he said, after a search for words, ‘be not wroth against
+those maidens! I love none of them.’
+
+‘Is that not cruel of you, O Thol? Do they not love you?’
+
+‘Though they love me, O Thia, I swear to you that I love not them.’
+
+‘Why should you not?’ she laughed. ‘Are you so foolish that you think I
+should be sorry?’
+
+‘O Thia,’ he rebuked her, ‘you speak empty words. You speak as though
+you did not love me.’
+
+‘I have long ceased to love you, O Thol,’ she said in a low voice.
+
+He stared at her blankly in the moonlight. His slow mind strove hard.
+‘But you are my wife,’ he said at last. ‘I am your husband. O Thia, is
+it indeed true that you have ceased to love me?’
+
+‘O Thol, it is most true.’
+
+Then, by stress of the great anger that rose in him, his mind worked
+more quickly--or rather his tongue was loosened. He told Thia that
+she had never loved him. She denied this coldly. He said that she had
+never understood him. She denied this warmly. He reminded her that even
+when she was a little girl she had once called him a coward; and this
+too she denied; but he maintained that it was so; and she reminded him
+that after he had been beaten by his master for seeing the dragon he
+said that she too ought to have been beaten for seeing the dragon;
+and he denied this; but she persisted that it was so; and he then said
+that she ought to have been beaten; and she replied that she could be
+now, and she challenged him to beat her; but he did not accept her
+challenge; and this, she said, proved that he was a coward; and he
+asked her to repeat this, and she repeated it, and he then reminded her
+that he had slain the dragon; and she, stamping her foot, said she only
+wished the dragon had slain him; and she made a face at him, and rushed
+out of the cave, and if there had been a door she would have slammed
+it; and really he was quite glad that she had gone; and after she had
+run far she lay down upon the grass and slept till dawn, and then,
+rising and brushing the dew off her arms and legs, went in search of
+some lonely spot where she should build her a hut of clay and wattles.
+
+And perhaps it was a sign of her alien blood that the spot chosen by
+her was in what we call Soho. It was the spot on which, many years
+later, many of my coævals were to dine in the little Restaurant du
+Bon-Accueil, half-way along Gerrard Street. Gone, as utterly as Thia’s
+hut, is the dear little Restaurant du Bon-Accueil. But again I must
+hark back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+‘Very surely,’ thought Thol, some moments after the sun had waked him
+and shown him the empty cave and brought back last night to his memory,
+‘I shall find her by the pond.’
+
+Thither, with much dignity of gait, but with the promise of forgiveness
+on his brow, he presently went. She was not there. There only her geese
+were.
+
+These he unpenned and let go into the pond, and then, having freed his
+goats also, sat down and waited. He waited all day long. She did not
+come. Nor was she there for him in the cave when he went back to it at
+sunset. Neither was she at the pond next morning. Not even her geese
+were there now.
+
+That she had wanted them, and not him, was a bitter thought to Thol.
+He had not, till now, known how much he loved her. That she had been
+here this morning, or in the night, made the ground somehow wonderful
+to him. But he frowned away from his brow the promise of forgiveness.
+He would not forgive Thia now. Still less would he go in quest of her.
+He freed his goats, guided them to some long grass and, sitting down,
+tried to take an intelligent interest in their doings and a lively
+interest in their welfare, and not wonder where Thia was.
+
+For three whole days he tried hard--tried with all that fixity of
+purpose which had enabled him at last to slay the dragon. It was Afa’s
+visit that unmanned him.
+
+Not she nor any other of those maidens had ever come to him at the pond
+in Thia’s time. If they happened to pass that way, they would gaze
+straight before them, or up at the sky, greeting neither the husband
+nor the wife, and simpering elaborately, as much as to say, ‘We are
+unworthy.’ But now it was straight at Thol that the approaching Afa
+simpered. And she said, ‘I am come to be the goat-herd’s help!’
+
+He marvelled that there was a time when he had thought he might have
+loved one of these maidens. He was not even sure that he knew which of
+them this one was. He was sure only that he despised them all. And this
+sentiment so contorted his mild face that there was nothing for Afa to
+do but toss her head and laugh and leave him.
+
+Presently the look of great scorn in his face was succeeded by a look
+of even greater love. He arose and went in search of Thia. But he did
+not in his quest of her throw dignity to the winds. He did not ask
+anybody where he should find her. He walked slowly, as though bent on
+no errand. It was near sunset when at length he espied his lost one
+near to a lonely pool at the edge of the forest.
+
+She did not see him. She sat busily plaiting wattles. There was a great
+pile of these beside her. And in and around the pool were her geese.
+
+It was they that saw him first, and at sight of him they began to
+quack, as though in warning. Thia looked up quickly and saw Thol. He
+held out his arms to her, he strode towards her, calling her name; but
+she was up, she was gone into the darkness of the forest.
+
+Long he peered into that darkness, and called into it, and even groped
+through it, but vainly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For people who are not accustomed to think, thought is a fatiguing
+affair. Thol, despite his robust body, was tired when he awoke next
+morning, for he had spent a great part of the night in wondering how to
+win back his wife. In the days before he slew the dragon he had been a
+constant thinker. Little by little he was now to regain the habit.
+
+Step by step he reached the premiss that in order to find a means of
+winning Thia back he must first make clear to himself why she had
+ceased to love him. He put together what he could recall of the many
+things that in the course of time she had said in anger against him.
+And he came to the conclusion that he had displeased her most by
+dwelling so much upon his great deed. He would dwell less upon it,
+try even to forget it. But this would not suffice. How was she to know
+that he was no longer dwelling as of yore? Perhaps he could do a second
+great deed? There seemed to be none to do. He must nevertheless try to
+think of one--some second great deed that would much please her. It was
+for the homelanders’ sake that the first one had found favour in her
+sight. And then somehow the homelanders had become less good because
+of it. Thia had often said so. Of course she had never blamed him for
+that. Still, perhaps she would not have ceased to love him if his deed
+had not done harm. Was there no deed by which the harm could be undone?
+Day by day, night by night, Thol went on thinking.
+
+After the lapse of what we should call a week or so, he began to act
+also.
+
+He knew that there could be no great thickness of barrier between the
+back of his cave and the back of the cave that had been the dragon’s;
+for in his childhood he had often heard through it quite clearly the
+sound of the voices of Gra and her children. To make in it now a
+breach big enough to crawl through on hands and knees was the first
+step in the plan that he had formed. With a great sharp stone, hour
+after hour, daily, he knelt at work. Fortunately--for else must the
+whole plan have come to naught--the barrier was but of earth, with
+quite small stones in it. Nevertheless, much of strength and patience
+had been exerted before the first little chink of daylight met Thol’s
+eyes.
+
+It was a glad moment for him when, that same evening, at sunset, at
+last he was able to crawl through into the western cave; but as he rose
+and gazed around the soot-blackened lair he did not exult. His work
+had but begun. And his work would never end while he lived. He prayed
+earnestly to the sun that he might live long and always do his work
+rightly. Also he prayed that Thia might soon again love him.
+
+That night, in his own cave, just as he was falling asleep, he had a
+doubt which greatly troubled him. He arose and went forth to a place
+where some ducks were. One of these he took and slew, and strode
+away with it to the marshes. There he heaved it into the ooze. It was
+quickly sucked down. This was well.
+
+On the next night he became a woodman; and many were the nights he
+spent in going to and fro in the dark between his cave and the nearest
+margin of the forest, lopping off great branches and bearing them away
+for storage, and even uprooting saplings and bearing away these also,
+and, with a flint axe, felling young trees, and chopping them into
+lengths that were portable. He continued this night-work until both
+caves were neatly stacked with wood enough to serve his purpose for a
+longish while.
+
+And then--for he had thought out everything, with that thoroughness
+which is the virtue of slow minds--he wove two thick screens of osiers
+and withes, each screen rather bigger than either end of the tunnel.
+On the evening when the second of these was finished, he made in the
+dragon’s cave, not far from the left-hand side of the cave’s mouth, a
+thick knee-high heap of branches and logs, some of them dry, others
+green. He placed at the other side of the mouth two thick flat stones,
+one upon the other.
+
+Back in his own cave, he smeared with sheep’s fat a certain great stick
+of very dry pine-wood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And on the following morning history began to repeat itself. With some
+variations, however. For example, it was not a puny little boy but a
+great strong man who, as the sun rose, came rushing with every symptom
+of terror down the western side of the hill. And the man was not really
+frightened. He only seemed so.
+
+He careered around the valley, howling now like one distraught.
+Responsive sheep, goats, geese, what not, made great noises of their
+own. From the mouths of caves and huts people darted and stood agape.
+Thol waved his arms wildly towards the cave upon the hill. People saw a
+great column of smoke climbing up from it into the sky.
+
+‘A dragon! Another dragon!’ was Thol’s burthen.
+
+People gathered round him in deep wonder and agitation. He told
+them, in gasps, that he had come down early--very early--to look for
+mushrooms--and had looked back and--seen a dragon crawling up the hill.
+He said that he had seen it only for a moment or two: it crawled very
+quickly--far more quickly than the old one. He added that it was rather
+smaller than the old one--smaller and yet far more terrible, though its
+smoke was less black. Also, that it held high its head, not scorching
+the grass on its way.
+
+There was no panic.
+
+‘O Thol,’ said one, ‘we need not fear the dragon, for here are you, to
+come between us and him.’
+
+‘Here by this stream,’ said another, ‘we shall presently bury him with
+great rejoicings, O high god.’
+
+The crowd went down on its knees, thanking Thol in anticipation. But
+he, provident plodder, had foreseen what would happen, and had his
+words ready. ‘Nay, O homelanders,’ he said, plucking at his great
+beard, ‘I am less young than I was. I am heavier, and not so brave.
+Peradventure some younger man will dare meet this dragon for us, some
+day. Meanwhile, let us tempt him with the flesh of beasts, as of yore,
+hoping that so he will come but seldom into our midst.’
+
+In consternation the crowd rose from its knees, and Thol walked quickly
+away, with a rather shambling gait.
+
+The awful news spread apace. The valley was soon full. Long and
+earnestly the great throng prayed to the sun that he would call the
+dragon away from them. He did not so. Up, up went the steadfast smoke
+from within the cave. Less black it certainly was than that of the
+other dragon, but not less dreadful. Almost as great as the terror
+that it inspired was the general contempt for Thol. Many quite old
+men vowed to practise the needful stroke of the spear. All the youths
+vowed likewise--yea, and many of the maidens too. It was well-known,
+of course, that Thol had practised for a long while, and that any
+haste would be folly; but such knowledge rather heartened than dejected
+the vowers. Meanwhile, the thing to do was what the craven Thol had
+suggested before he slunk away: to offer food as of yore. Shib,
+bristling with precedents, organised the labour. Thol had said that
+the dragon was a smaller one than the other. Perhaps therefore not so
+much food would be needed. But it was better to be on the safe side and
+offer the same ration. Up to the little shelf of ground in front of the
+cave’s mouth were borne two goats, three ducks, two deer, three geese
+and two sheep.
+
+All day long the valley was crowded with gazers, hopers, comforters of
+one another, offerers-up of prayers.
+
+As day drew to its close, the tensity increased. Would this dragon wake
+and eat at sunset, as that other had been wont to do? How soon would
+appear through the smoke that glimpse of nether fire which proclaimed
+that his head was out of the cave, alert and active? And would that
+glow rise and fall, in the old way, twelve times, with the sound of the
+clashed jaws? What was in store for the homeland to-night?
+
+None but Thol knew.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He, very wisely, had rested all day in preparation for the tasks of
+evening and night. Two or three times, moving aside the screen that
+kept the smoke out of his cave, he had crawled through the opening and,
+drawing the other screen across the other side of it, had tended the
+fire. For the rest, he had been all inactive.
+
+As twilight crept into the cave, he knelt in solemn supplication to the
+departing sun. Presently, when darkness had descended, he struck two
+flints, lit one end of his pine-wood staff, moved the screen aside,
+drew a long deep breath, and crawled swiftly into the other cave.
+Slowly he moved his torch from side to side of the cave’s mouth, along
+the ground. He was holding it in his left hand, and in his right hand
+was holding one of the two flat stones. After a pause, still kneeling,
+he raised high the torch for a moment or two and then sharply lowered
+it in the direction of one of the smoke-clouded animals. At the same
+time he powerfully clashed the one stone down upon the other. Another
+pause, and he repeated these actions exactly, directing the torch
+towards the next animal. He performed them ten times in all. Then he
+extinguished his torch and crept quickly home, puffing and spluttering
+and snorting, glad to escape into clear air.
+
+When he had regained his breath, he crawled back to drag the carcasses
+in. The roe and the buck he left where they were. He had calculated
+that three nightly journeys to the marshes and back would be all that
+he could achieve. First he would take the two sheep, one on each
+shoulder; next, the goats; lastly the birds, three necks in either
+hand. The buck and the roe would be too heavy to be carried together;
+and for five journeys there would certainly not be time. It was for
+this reason that he had described the dragon as smaller than the old
+one, and had clashed the stones ten times only.
+
+From the valley rose sounds of rejoicing that all was well for the
+homeland to-night. One by one, Thol transferred the carcasses to his
+own cave. He waited there among them till the dead of night, when all
+folk would be sleeping. Then, shouldering the two sheep, he sallied
+forth down the hill and away to the marshes.
+
+He accomplished the whole of his night-work before the stars had begun
+to fade. Then, having replenished and banked the fire, he lay down to
+sleep. Some four hours later he woke to go and tend the fire again, and
+then again slept.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a toilsome, lonesome, monotonous and fuliginous life that
+Thol had chosen; but he never faltered in it. Always at nightfall he
+impersonated the dragon, and in the small hours went his journeys to
+the marshes; and never once did he let the fire die.
+
+The afternoons passed very slowly. He wished he could sally forth into
+the sunshine, like other men. He paced round and round his cave, hour
+after hour, a strange figure, dark-handed, dark-visaged, dark-bearded.
+
+In so far as they deigned to remember him at all, the homelanders
+supposed he had gone away, that first morning, across the waters or
+through the forests, to some land where he could look men in the face.
+
+Here he was, however, in their midst, a strenuous and faithful servant.
+
+He had a stern grim joy in the hardness of his life--save that he could
+never ask Thia to share it with him. He had not foreseen--it was the
+one thing he had not thought out well--how hard the life would be.
+The great deed by which he had thought to bring Thia back to him must
+forever keep them asunder. Thus he had done an even greater deed than
+he intended. And his stern grim joy in it was thereby the greater.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Had she so wished, Thia might have become very popular and have
+regained something of her past glory. After Thol’s confession of
+cowardice she had instantly risen in the homelanders’ esteem. How very
+right she had been to leave him! Friendly eyes and friendly words
+greeted her. But when they all knelt praying the sun to call the dragon
+away, she remained upright and mute. And afterwards, when she was asked
+why, she said that it was well that the dragon should abide among them,
+for thus would they all be the better, in heart and deed, and therefore
+truly the happier, could they but know it. She said that whether or not
+they could know it, so it was.
+
+These sayings of hers were taken in bad part, and she was shunned
+because of them. This did not mar the joy she had in knowing that all
+was well once more in the homeland.
+
+She felt herself not at all unblest in the quiet spinsterly life she
+was leading, in and out of her trim new hut, with her dear flock of
+geese about her.
+
+Of Thol, nowadays, she thought more gently. She felt that if he had
+stayed in the homeland she would have gone back to him. It would have
+been her bounden duty to be with him and to comfort him in his shame.
+Indeed his shame made him dear to her once more. As the days passed
+she thought more and more about him. It was strange that he had gone
+from the homeland. No homelander ever had gone forth into the perils
+of the lands beyond. If she herself, daughter of wanderers, had roved
+away instead of building this hut to dwell in, she might not have much
+marvelled at herself, less brave though she was than Thol. And Thol was
+no longer brave. How had he, fearing a dragon smaller than that other,
+conquered his fear of known and unknown things that were worse yet, far
+worse yet?
+
+And one evening a strange doubt came to her. Might it not be that Thol
+was still in the homeland? In one of all these dark forests he might be
+living, with nuts and berries to support life. Or, she further guessed,
+he might even be in his own cave, stealing out at night when all but
+the watchmen on the other side of the hill were sleeping. This notion,
+foolish though it seemed to her, possessed her mind.
+
+So soon as silence and sleep had descended on the homeland, Thia
+herself stole out into the clear starlit night. Not far from the
+eastern spur of the hill she lay down in a clump of long grass, and
+thence, gazing up, watched the cave’s mouth steadily.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some one presently came forth: and yes, it was Thol. Slowly he came
+down the hill, with his head bent forward, with his hands up to his
+bowed shoulders, and two burdens at his back--two goats, as Thia saw
+when presently Thol turned aside southward. He looked very strange. His
+hair and face seemed to have grown quite dark. And what was he doing
+with those two goats? Thia lay still, with a fast-beating heart. She
+felt that her voice would not have come, even had she tried to call to
+him.
+
+She watched him out of sight, then rose to her feet and, hesitatingly,
+went to the foot of the hill, and then, quickly and resolutely, went up
+it and into the cave.
+
+Quick-witted though she was, the sight of three geese and three ducks
+and of two sheep puzzled her deeply; and not less did she wonder at the
+quantity of stacked wood. And what was that fence of osiers against the
+wall? She moved it slightly and saw a great breach in the wall; and
+through this some smoke came drifting in. And now her quick wits began
+to work--but in such wise as to make her bewilderment the deeper.
+
+Suddenly, drawing a deep breath, she went down on her hands and knees,
+and crawled rapidly through.
+
+She was soon back again. Blinking hard and shaking the smoke from
+her nostrils, she went to breathe the clear air at the cave’s mouth.
+But, good though this air was, she hardly tasted it. She had burst
+out sobbing. She, who never in all her life had shed tears, sobbed
+much now. But she remembered that tears make people’s eyes ugly. So
+she controlled herself and dried her eyes vigorously. She had not
+remembered that the palms of her hands must be all black from her
+crawl. When she saw them, and knew what her face must be now, she burst
+out laughing. And the sound made her feel very young, for it was long
+since she had laughed. But, as she wished to please Thol’s eyes, she
+retired to the back of the cave and crouched where she would scarcely
+be seen by him when he came.
+
+He came at last, and then, very softly, she cried out to him, ‘Thol!’
+
+He, brave though he was, started violently.
+
+‘Do not look at me, O Thol! Not yet! For my face is black and would
+displease you. Look at me only after you have heard me. O Thol, if they
+said now that you were a god, almost would I believe them. But if you
+were a god your deed would be less great. The wonder is that you are
+a man, and were once mine. O Thol, forgive me, keep me here with you,
+need me!’
+
+But he slowly answered, ‘Nay, O Thia, this cave is not now for a woman.’
+
+‘Not for a woman that is your wife and lover? Think! Was it not for my
+sake and for love of me that you thought to do what you are doing?’
+
+‘Yea, O Thia. Yet, now that I am doing it, itself suffices me. I am
+strong, and suffer not under the burden of it. The very heaviness of
+it makes me glad. And now your knowledge of it gladdens me, too. But I
+would not have you bear the least part of it with me. Go to your own
+home!’
+
+‘You speak firmly, O great dragon! Yet will not I obey you. Tell me of
+your work. Is it to the marshes that you take the beasts and the birds?’
+
+‘Yea. Begone, small dear one!’ And he stooped down to take the two
+sheep.
+
+‘Once, long ago, you wished that a lad might help you in your hard
+work. O Thol, I am as I was, trustier than any lad. It were better that
+you should go twice, not thrice, every night, to the marshes. I will
+always take the birds.’ And she rose to take them.
+
+But a thought, a very important thought, came to her, giving her pause.
+And she said, ‘The fire must first be tended.’
+
+‘It has no need yet,’ he answered. ‘I tend it when I come back from the
+last journey.’
+
+‘To-night it shall be tended earlier. And I will so tend it that it
+shall last long.’ She was down on her knees and off into the smoke
+before he could stop her. He followed her, protesting that such work
+was not for her. She did it, nevertheless, very well. And presently,
+side by side, he with two sheep, she with three birds’ necks in either
+fist, they went forth into the starlight, and down away to the marshes.
+
+There, having duly sunk their burdens, they took each other by the
+hand, and turned homeward. At one of the running brooks on their way
+home, Thia halted. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘will I wash my face well. And do
+you, too, O Thol, wash yours, so that when we wake in the morning mine
+shall not displease you.’
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Every night Thia accompanied Thol on one of the two journeys; and
+during the other she would go to the forest and gather wood, so that
+there should always be plenty of fuel in hand. She was sorry to have
+had to abandon her geese, for she felt they would not be as happy with
+any one as they had been with her. Nothing else whatever was there
+to mar her joy in the life that she and Thol were leading together,
+and in the good that they were doing. It amused her to know that the
+homelanders would think she had wandered away--she who was serving them
+so well. Its very secrecy made her life the more joyous.
+
+Daily she prayed to the sun and other gods that she and Thol might live
+to be very old and might never fail in their work.
+
+But the sun and those others were not good listeners.
+
+As the nights lengthened and the leaves began to fall, the mists over
+the marshes and around them grew ever thicker. It was not easy to find
+the way through them; and they were very cold, and had a savour that
+was bitter to the tongue and to the nostrils. And one morning Thia,
+when she woke, was shivering from head to foot, though she was in
+Thol’s arms. She slipped away from him without waking him, and went not
+merely to tend the fire but also to warm herself at it. All through the
+morning she was shivering; and in the evening her hands became hot, as
+did her face and all her body. She felt very weak. She could laugh no
+more now at Thol’s disquietude. She lay down, but could not lie very
+still. At about the time when they were wont to sally forth, she rose
+up, feeling that even though she might not be able to carry the birds
+to-night the journey would freshen her. She soon found that she was too
+weak even to stand. Thol was loth to leave her; but she insisted that
+the work must be done. Again and again, next day and during the next
+night, she implored him that if she died he would not mourn her very
+much and would not once falter in the work. He promised that he would
+not falter. Other days and nights passed. It seemed to Thol that Thia
+had ceased to know him. She did not even follow him with her eyes now.
+One morning, at daybreak, soon after his return from the third journey,
+she seemed, by her gaze, to know him. But presently she died in his
+arms.
+
+On that night he went to the forest and dug a grave for his wife. Then,
+returning to the cave, he took her in his arms, and carried her away,
+and buried her.
+
+In the time that followed, he was not altogether lonely. He felt by day
+that somehow she was in the cave with him still, and by night he felt
+that she walked with him. He never faltered in the work.
+
+He faltered not much even when the marshes did to him as they had done
+to Thia. Shivering in every limb, or hot and aching, and very weak, he
+yet forced himself to tend the fire and at nightfall to brandish the
+torch and clash the stones and drag in the beasts and birds. It irked
+him that he was not strong enough to carry even one sheep away. Surely,
+he would be strong again soon? For Thia’s sake, and for the homeland’s,
+he wished ardently to live. But there came an evening when the watchers
+in the valley saw no rising and falling, heard no clashing, of the
+dragon’s jaws.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Would the dragon come forth to-night? The valley on the further side of
+the stream was now thickly crowded. On the nearer side were many single
+adventurers, with spears. Their prowess and skill were not tested. The
+dragon came not forth.
+
+In the dawn it was noted that his smoke was far less thick than it was
+wont to be. Soon it ceased altogether. What had happened? Perchance the
+dragon was ailing? But even an ailing dragon would breathe. A great
+glad surmise tremulously formed itself. Was the dragon dead?
+
+The surmise quickly became a firm belief--so firm that, in spite of
+protests from the precise Shib, songs of thanksgiving were heartily
+sung before the cave was approached and examined.
+
+People were much puzzled. The dead man lying at the cave’s mouth,
+grasping in one hand a flat stone and in the other a charred staff,
+was not quickly recognised as Thol, so black were his hair and skin;
+nor was he at once known to have been the dragon. The quantities of
+stacked wood, the tunnel into the cave where Thol had lived, did not
+quickly divulge their meaning. Only after long arguments and many
+conjectures did the homelanders understand the trick that had been
+played on them. Why, with what evil intent, it had been played, they
+were almost too angry to discuss at present. But certain words of
+Thia’s were remembered; and it was felt that she herself perhaps had
+put the trick into Thol’s mind and that this was why she had fled the
+homeland. She had better not set foot in it again.
+
+Before the sun sank, Thol was buried without honour, and far from Thia.
+
+And before the sun sank many other times the homelanders were as they
+had been before the coming of the true dragon, and as they had been
+again before the false one was among them.
+
+
+FINIS
+
+
+
+
+And thus--does our tale end unhappily? I think not. After all, the
+homelanders at large are rather shadowy to us. Oc and Loga, Shib and
+Veo, Afa and her like, and all those others, all those nameless others,
+do not mean much to us. It is Thol and Thia that we care about. For
+their sake we wish that the good they did could have been lasting. But
+it is not in the nature of things that anything--except the nature
+of things--should last. Saints and wise statesmen can do much. Their
+reward is in the doing of it. They are lucky if they do not live long
+enough to see the undoing. It should suffice us that Thol and Thia
+together in their last days knew a happiness greater than they had ever
+known--Thol a greater happiness than in the days of his glory, and Thia
+than in the days of hers.
+
+
+  PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, LTD.,
+  LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[A] Lest the reader assume that in the course of this narrative one or
+both of Thia’s parents will return to claim her, let me at once state
+that within a few months of her being left in the homeland her father
+was killed by a lion, and her mother by a lioness, in what has since
+become Shropshire.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
+
+
+  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
+
+  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
+
+  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
+
+  New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
+    public domain.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75341 ***