"It is only
told to children. Scores of us come here among the woods and dance
for nights together, and are none the worse."
This put Jack in a thousand new thoughts. He was a grave lad; he
had no mind to dance himself; he wore his fetter manfully, and
tended his ulcer without complaint. But he loved the less to be
deceived or to see others cheated. He began to lie in wait for
heathen travellers, at covert parts of the road, and in the dusk of
the day, so that he might speak with them unseen; and these were
greatly taken with their wayside questioner, and told him things of
weight. The wearing of gyves (they said) was no command of
Jupiter's. It was the contrivance of a white-faced thing, a
sorcerer, that dwelt in that country in the Wood of Eld. He was
one like Glaucus that could change his shape, yet he could be
always told; for when he was crossed, he gobbled like a turkey. He
had three lives; but the third smiting would make an end of him
indeed; and with that his house of sorcery would vanish, the gyves
fall, and the villagers take hands and dance like children.
"And in your country?" Jack would ask.
But at this the travellers, with one accord, would put him off;
until Jack began to suppose there was no land entirely happy. Or,
if there were, it must be one that kept its folk at home; which was
natural enough.
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