done with them for ever. It sounded like suits of armour falling, and
the sleepy monks ran in, for they thought the monastery had been
attacked by the French. The novice came first of all, waving his new
sword and shouting Saxon battle-cries. When they saw the shoeing-tools
they were very bewildered, till the novice asked leave to speak, and
told what he had done to the farmer, and what he had said to
Wayland-Smith, and how, though the dormitory light was burning, he had
found the wonderful rune-carved sword in his cot.

'The Abbot shook his head at first, and then he laughed and said to the
novice: "Son Hugh, it needed no sign from a heathen God to show me that
you will never be a monk. Take your sword, and keep your sword, and go
with your sword, and be as gentle as you are strong and courteous. We
will hang up the Smith's tools before the Altar," he said, "because,
whatever the Smith of the Gods may have been, in the old days, we know
that he worked honestly for his living and made gifts to Mother Church."
Then they went to bed again, all except the novice, and he sat up in the
garth playing with his sword. Then Weland said to me by the stables:
"Farewell, Old Thing; you had the right of it. You saw me come to
England, and you see me go. Farewell!"

'With that he strode down the hill to the corner of the Great
Woods--Woods Corner, you call it now--to the very place where he had
first landed--and I heard him moving through the thickets towards
Horsebridge for a little, and then he was gone. That was how it
happened. I saw it.'

Both children drew a long breath.

'But what happened to Hugh the novice?' said Una.