The boy with the pet wolf did not come again to the village where he had first seen a holiday feast and heard what religion was, but he saw a great deal of it for all that. His brother never cared to go back and seemed to take no interest in what he had seen.
Pero, one of the shepherds, while out looking for stray lambs on the hills, met the youngster and his wolf coming down with two of the woolly black-faced truants. They had been hunting, the boy said, and had come across these lambs far up on the heights where lambs had no business to be, and brought them back. When the shepherd asked the lad his name, he said the Cub was as good a name as any. The shepherd was an old man and had seen many queer things in his life and heard of queerer ones. He had found that most frightful stories, when one came to know the truth of them, were some quite nat[pg 69]ural incident made large in the eyes of a frightened man. This boy might, of course, be a wood demon, and his wolf might be another, servants of some evil power, but the shepherd had never seen any such beings and he did not know how they were supposed to look. When he offered the Cub a piece of his bannock, made with salt and water and meal and cooked on a hot stone, it was accepted and eaten, and Pincho the wolf ate some of it also. Pincho would eat almost anything. But that ought to prove that they were no devils, for if they were they would not have eaten the salt.
Pero was a little lame from a fall he had had several years ago, although he got about more nimbly than some younger men. He found the help of this wild youth and his wilder companion very convenient at times. After awhile he began to see that the Cub was very curious about the customs of the Sabine village. He did not ask many questions, but he would listen as long as Pero would talk. Many a long still hour the two spent, on the grass while the sheep grazed, or coming slowly down the slope toward the village at nightfall, but always, when they came near the village gate, Pero would look around presently and find that he was alone.
The first time that Pero noticed this curiosity [pg 70]was one day when they were high above the village so that they could look down on a level stretch of land where the men were marking out a new field. Boundary lines were very important with any people as soon as they stopped wandering from place to place and settled down to work the same land, year after year. Of course, it takes more than one season to make any plot of ground produce all it can, and no man cares to do a year’s work of which he gets none of the benefit; there must be a clear understanding on the subject of the boundary.
In the beginning there were no writings, or deeds, or public records to mark the line of a farm, and the only way to protect property rights was by ceremonies which would make people remember the boundary lines, and the landmarks which it was a horrible crime to move.
Pero began by explaining that every house of the village had to be separated from every other house by at least two and one half feet. As each house was a sort of family temple, the home of the spirits of the ancestors of that family; naturally nobody but these spirits had any right there. Two families could not occupy the same house any more than two persons could occupy the same place. On the same plan, each field was enclosed by a narrow strip of ground never [pg 71]touched by the plow or walked on or otherwise used. This was the property of the god of boundaries, Terminus.
The boundary line of each field was marked by a furrow, drawn at the time the field was marked out for the village or the individual owner. At certain times, this furrow would be plowed again, the owners chanting hymns and offering sacrifices. On this line the men were now placing the landmarks they called the termini. The terminus was a wooden pillar, or the trunk of a small tree, set up firmly in the soil. In its planting certain ceremonies were observed.
First a hole was dug, and the post was set up close by, wreathed with a garland of grasses and flowers. Then a sacrifice of some sort was offered—in this case a lamb—and the blood ran down into the hole. In the hole were placed also grain, cakes, fruits, a little honeycomb and some wine, and burned, live coals from the hearth fire of the home or the sacred fire of the village being ready for this. When it was all consumed the post was planted on the still warm ashes. If any man in plowing the field ran his furrow beyond the proper limit, his plowshare would be likely to strike one of these posts. If he went so far as to overturn it or move it, the penalty was death. There was really no excuse [pg 72]for him, for the line was plainly marked for all to see.
The Cub looked down at the solemnly marching group, the white oxen, and the setting of the posts with bright and interested eyes.
