“Yes, I believe there is more—he lived to be a very old man and became Chief in his time, and to him Garff bequeathed the wonderful bronze axe, Skull-pecker. He had much fighting to do; but he beat back his enemies and kept his people’s hunting-grounds and their cattle safe, as long as he lived.”
On the evening of the last day of the holidays Uncle John took the boys into his study and opened the drawer in the cabinet where his arrow-heads were.
“Now,” he said, “I want each of you to choose a flint out of this lot, and keep it as a reminder of what we have been reading about. Each one can have his pick in turn—Dick first, because he was here first, and Joe next and then David, as that is the order in which we met one another.” There were plenty to choose from, and they each chose one of the barbed war-arrows. Then Uncle John said:
“When I was a boy I used to know an old gentleman who had a flint arrow-head, and I used to wish he would give it to me. But no—he set great store by it and wore it on his watch-chain, mounted as a charm. He called it a fairy-bolt, because he said that it had been made and shot away by the fairies; and he thought it would bring him good luck all his life. I hope you are all pleased with your flints; and though, perhaps, they can’t bring you any good luck, at any rate you have learned something about them, and about the people who made and used them long ago, in this same country in which we live and now call England.”
Transcriber’s Notes
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been retained. Differences in chapter titles between the table of contents and individual chapter headings for Chapters [V], [X], [XV], [XVIII], [XXI], [XXVI], and [XXVII] are preserved here.
The following apparent typographical errors were corrected:
Page [86], “villge” changed to “village.” (before anyone else in the village was born)
Page [126], “firtree” changed to “fir tree.” (sticks and pieces of dried fir tree wood)