Thus they fared, until at last they reached the forge, and the hut where the armorer dwelt alone. The way through the wood had been long, and the afternoon was well-nigh spent when Karl laid little Wulf upon a heap of skins just beyond the great chimney, and set himself to prepare food for himself and his charge.
CHAPTER III
HOW WULF FARED AT KARL THE ARMORER’S HUT
Big Karl the armorer was busy at his forge, next morning, long before his wee guest awakened from the deep sleep of childhood, which he slept upon a pile of pelts in a corner of the smithy. Working with deft lightness of hand at a small, long anvil close beside the forge, Karl had tempered and hammered the broken point of Herr Banf’s sword until the stout blade was again ready for yeoman service, and then he turned to the stranger knight’s blade, which was broken somewhat about the hilt and guard.
It was a good weapon, and as Karl traced his finger thoughtfully down its length he turned it toward the open door, that the early sunlight might catch it. Then he suddenly gave a start, and hastily carried the sword out into the full daylight, where he stared it over closely from hilt to point, turning it this way and that, with knit brows and a look of deep sorrow on his browned visage. After that he strode into the smithy, and went over to where the boy lay, still fast asleep.
Turning him over upon the pelts, he studied the little face as sharply as he had done the sword, noting the broad white brow, the delicate round of the cheek, and the set of the chin, firm despite its baby curves; and as he did so a great sternness came over the face of the armorer.
“There’s some awful work here,” he said at last to himself. “Heaven be praised I came upon the little one! Would that I might have had a look at the face of that big knight.”
Still musing, he turned and went to a cleverly hid cupboard in the wall beside the great chimney. Opening this, he disclosed an array of blades of many sorts and shapes, and from among these he took one that in general appearance seemed the fellow of the stranger’s weapon, save that it had, to all look, seen but scant service in warfare.
Karl compared the two, and then set to a strange task. Hanging the service-battered sword naked within the cupboard, he took the new blade and began to ill-treat it upon his anvil—battering the hilt, taking a bit of metal from the guard, and putting nicks into the edge, only to beat and grind them very carefully out again. He took a bottle of acid from a shelf and spilled a few drops where blade met hilt, wiping it off again when it had somewhat stained and roughened the steel. This roughness he afterward smoothed away, and worked at the sword until he had it in fair semblance of a hardly used tool put in good order by a skilful smith.
This done he sheathed it in the scabbard which the stranger had worn, and which was a fair sheath, wrought with gold ornaments cunningly devised. Karl looked at it with longing.
“I’d like well to save it for ye, youngster,” he said; “but ’tis a fair risk as it stands. Let Herr Ritter Banf alone for having spied the gold o’ this sheath; it must e’en go back to him.” He laid the sheathed weapon away in a chest with Herr Banf’s own until such time as he should make his next trip to the castle.