“My father told me once,” quoth Wilfrid, smiling, “that no work is worth the doing for ourselves alone. We were making a wall round the sheepfold, and I, being but a lad, wondered at the tugging and bedding of great stones when half the size would ha’ served. He wasn’t a stout man neither—it was the spring before he died. He told me it was ‘for the honor of the land.’ I can see it all now—the silly sheep straying over the sweet spring turf, gray old Pincher guarding them, the old Roman wall that we could not ha’ grubbed up if we would, and our wall joining it, to last after we were dead. That bit o’ wall’s been a monument to me all these years.”
“You’re not one to scamp work whatever you’re at,” Guy declared heartily, “but that cup’s due to be finished by to-morrow.”
When the wreath of blossoms was in place around the shallow golden bowl, the smaller garland around the base, and the stem was encircled with bands of ruby, azure and emerald, it was a chalice fit for the Queen of Fairyland if she were also a Sussex lass. Brother Basil, whose eye was never at fault, pronounced it perfect. It was not like anything else that they had made, but that, he said, was no matter.
“When Abbot Suger of St. Denys made his master-works,” Guy observed as he put away his tools for the night, “he did not bring workmen from Byzantium; he taught Frenchmen to do their own work. And an Englishman is as good as a Frenchman any day.”
THE WATCHWORD
When from the lonely beacon height
The leaping flame flared high,
When bells rang out into the night
Where ships at anchor lie,
There orderly in all men’s sight,
With sword or pike in hand,
Stood serf and craftsman, squire and knight
For the Honor of the Land.
When war had passed, and Peace at last
Ruled over earth and sky,
The bonds of ancient law held fast,—
The faith which cannot die.
Ah, call us aliens though you may—
We hear and understand,
The deathless watchword wakes to-day,—
The Honor of the Land!