“I knew,” said Beowald. “I know all that goes on in my mountains. I know the eagles that soar above my head. I know the wolves that howl in the night. I know the small flowers that grow beneath my feet, and the big trees that give me shade. I know Killimooin as no one else does.”
“Well, Beowald, do you know anything about the Secret Forest then?” asked Paul, eagerly. The other children could now understand what was said in the Baronian language, though they were not able to speak it very well as yet. They listened eagerly for Beowald’s answer.
Beowald shook his head. “I could take you where you can see it,” he said. “But there is no way to it. My feet have followed my goats everywhere in these mountains, even to the summits — but never have they leapt down the other side. Not even for goats is there any path.”
The children were disappointed. “Are there robbers here?” asked Jack, trying to speak in Baronian. Beowald understood him.
“Sometimes I hear strange men at night,” he said. “They creep down the mountain path, and they call to one another as the owls do. Then I am afraid and I hide in my cave, for these robbers are fierce and wild. They are like the wolves that roam in the winter, and they seek men to rob and slay.”
“Where do the robbers live?” asked Paul, puzzled.
Beowald shook his head, gazing at the little prince with his dark blind eyes. “That is a thing I have never known,” he said. “They are men without a home. Men without a dwelling-place. That is why I fear them. They cannot be human, these men, for all men have a dwelling-place.”
“That’s silly,” said Jack, in English. “All men have to live somewhere, even robbers! Paul, ask Beowald if they could live somewhere in a mountain cave, as he does.”
Paul asked the goatherd, but he shook his head. “I know every cave in the mountains,” he said. “They are my caves, for only I set foot in them. I live up here all the summer, and only in the cold winter do I go down to the valley to be with my mother. In the good weather I am happy here, with my goats and my music.”
“Play to us again,” begged Peggy. The goatherd put his wooden flute to his lips and began to play a strange little tune. The goats around lifted their heads and listened. The little kids came quite near. A great old goat, with enormous curling horns, stepped proudly up to Beowald and put his face close to the goatherd’s.