Ch. 8: Hal O' the Draft

Prophets have honour all over the Earth,
Except in the village where they were born,
Where such as knew them boys from birth
Nature-ally hold 'em in scorn.

When Prophets are naughty and young and vain,
They make a won'erful grievance of it;
(You can see by their writings how they complain),
But Oh, 'tis won'erful good for the Prophet!

There's nothing Nineveh Town can give
(Nor being swallowed by whales between),
Makes up for the place where a man's folk live,
That don't care nothing what he has been.
He might ha' been that, or he might ha' been this,
But they love and they hate him for what he is.

***

A rainy afternoon drove Dan and Una over to play pirates
in the Little Mill. If you don't mind rats on the rafters and
oats in your shoes, the mill-attic, with its trap-doors
and inscriptions on beams about floods and sweethearts,
is a splendid place. It is lighted by a foot-square window,
called Duck Window, that looks across to Little Lindens
Farm, and the spot where Jack Cade was killed.

When they had climbed the attic ladder (they called it
'the mainmast tree', out of the ballad of Sir Andrew
Barton, and Dan 'swarved it with might and main', as the
ballad says) they saw a man sitting on Duck Window-sill.
He was dressed in a plum-coloured doublet and tight
plum-coloured hose, and he drew busily in a red-edged book.

'Sit ye! Sit ye!' Puck cried from a rafter overhead. 'See
what it is to be beautiful! Sir Harry Dawe - pardon, Hal -
says I am the very image of a head for a gargoyle.'

The man laughed and raised his dark velvet cap to the
children, and his grizzled hair bristled out in a stormy
fringe. He was old - forty at least - but his eyes were
young, with funny little wrinkles all round them. A
satchel of embroidered leather hung from his broad belt,
which looked interesting.

'May we see?' said Una, coming forward.

'Surely - sure-ly!' he said, moving up on the window-
seat, and returned to his work with a silver-pointed
pencil. Puck sat as though the grin were fixed for ever on
his broad face, while they watched the quick, certain
fingers that copied it. Presently the man took a reed pen
from his satchel, and trimmed it with a little ivory knife,
carved in the semblance of a fish.
'Oh, what a beauty!' cried Dan.

"Ware fingers! That blade is perilous sharp. I made it
myself of the best Low Country cross-bow steel. And so,
too, this fish. When his back-fin travels to his tail - so - he
swallows up the blade, even as the whale swallowed
Gaffer Jonah ... Yes, and that's my inkhorn. I made the
four silver saints round it. Press Barnabas's head. It
opens, and then -'He dipped the trimmed pen,