Sometimes in the heart of this mountain there were rumblings underground, as if the thunder had gone to earth like a badger. The old people said then that the smith of the gods was working [pg 9]at his forge. The noises were made by his hammer, beating out weapons for the gods. The plume of smoke that drifted lazily up from the deep bowl-shaped hollow in the mountain top came from his fires. To these people the mountain was like a great still creature, maybe a god in disguise. The forest hung on the slopes above like a bearskin on the shoulders of a giant. Up higher were barren rocks and cliffs, where nothing grew.
Marcia looked up at the mighty crest so far above, and then down across the valley, where the stubble of the grain fields shone golden in the westering sun. The river, winding away beyond it, was bluer than the sky. She wondered whether, if her people should ever go away, they would tell their children how beautiful this land was. But of course they never would go. They had lived too long where they were ever to be willing to leave their home on the mountain. No other place could be like it. The floods that sometimes ruined the lowlands never rose as high as this; the wandering, warlike tribes that sometimes attacked their neighbors did not trouble them here. They belonged to the mountain, as the chestnut trees and the squirrels did.
“Me make basket,” announced her little sister, pulling at the withes, her rag doll tumbling to [pg 10]the ground as she tried to scramble up on the wall. “Up! up!”
“O Felic’la (Kitty), don’t; you’ll spoil sister’s work! I’ll begin one for you.”
The Kitten had got her name from her disposition, which was to insist on doing whatever she saw any one else doing, just long enough to make confusion wherever she went. What with showing the little fingers how to manage the spidery ribs of the little basket she began, and working out the braided border of her own basket, Marcia’s attention was fully taken up.
She did not even see that Marcs was driving in the sheep until they began crowding into the sheepfold. The walls of this, like the walls of the house itself, were of stone, laid by that long-ago Colonus, and as solid and firm as if they were built yesterday. The stones were not squared or shaped, and there was no mortar, but they were fitted together so cleverly that they seemed as solid as the mountain itself. They hardly ever needed repair. The roofs, of seasoned chestnut boughs woven in and out, seemed almost as firm as the stonework. This place had been settled when the farmers had to fight wolves every year. Even now, if the wolves had a hard winter and got very hungry, they sometimes came around and tried to get at the sheep. [pg 11]Then the men would take their spears and long knives and go on a wolf-hunt. But that had not happened now for several years.
Why were the sheep coming in so early?
Marcs looked rather disturbed, and he was in a hurry. Bruno too was coming home without any fish, an unusual thing for him; and he looked both scared and puzzled. The mother was standing in the door, shading her eyes with her hand and looking at the sky. Marcs caught sight of the girls in their corner.
“You had better pick up all that and go in,” he called to them. “Pater sent us home as quick as we could scamper. See how strange the sky is.”
They all looked. Little Felic’la, with round eyes, dropped her basket and pointed.