'If I had eyes as I could see, No mortal man would trouble me.'
They all had tea together by the hives, and Hobden said the loaf-cake which Ellen had given them was almost as good as what his wife used to make, and he showed them how to set a wire at the right height for hares. They knew about rabbits already.
Then they climbed up Long Ditch into the lower end of Far Wood. This is sadder and darker than the Volaterrae end because of an old marlpit full of black water, where weepy, hairy moss hangs round the stumps of the willows and alders. But the birds come to perch on the dead branches, and Hobden says that the bitter willow-water is a sort of medicine for sick animals.
They sat down on a felled oak-trunk in the shadows of the beech undergrowth, and were looping the wires Hobden had given them, when they saw Parnesius.
'How quietly you came!' said Una, moving up to make room. 'Where's Puck?'
'The Faun and I have disputed whether it is better that I should tell you all my tale, or leave it untold,' he replied.
'I only said that if he told it as it happened you wouldn't understand it,' said Puck, jumping up like a squirrel from behind the log.
'I don't understand all of it,' said Una, 'but I like hearing about the little Picts.'
'What I can't understand,' said Dan, 'is how Maximus knew all about the Picts when he was over in Gaul.'
'He who makes himself Emperor anywhere must know everything, everywhere,' said Parnesius. 'We had this much from Maximus's mouth after the Games.'