34 WITH CARL OF THE HILL 



became a rallying-point for all the forest round. 

 The Sunday would bring down friends from Olafs 

 settlement, for all that they had to be back at 

 work by the first thing the fallowing day. Rough 

 wood-cutters would frame any clumsy excuse so they 

 might take Carl's hut on their way from work. And 

 there they would sit without a word to say for 

 themselves, gazing at Sunlight with great foolish 

 faces, happy in her lightest word. Their poor 

 silent homage they gave her as of right : she was 

 their queen, and any one of them would have died 

 for her had there been need. 



Carl, in any moments he could snatch from 

 his occupation, would devote himself to the child. 

 And sometimes by doing double work one day 

 he could contrive a holiday the next, and these 

 were Sunlight's festal days. For then she could 

 go with him a whole long day into the forest, and 

 when she was tired he could carry her on his 

 broad shoulder many and many a mile. Under 

 him the forest became to her a palace of living 

 wonders, for he taught her all he knew. He 

 showed her how the speckled spider made its web ; 

 and how the dew hung there like gems of light, 

 and why. How, too, the dew was there some 



