‘“Has it a handle and two cutting edges?” I called. “For that’ll be a Knight’s Sword.”
‘“No, it hasn’t,” he says. “It’s neither ploughshare, whittle, hook, nor crook, nor aught I’ve yet seen men handle.” By this time he was scratting in the dirt to prize it up.
‘“Whatever it is, you know who put it there, Robin,” said Sir Huon to me, “or you would not ask those questions. You should have told me as soon as you knew.”
‘“What could you or I have done against the Smith that made it and laid it for him to find?” I said, and I whispered Sir Huon what I had seen at the Forge on Thor’s Day, when the babe was first brought to the Hill.
‘“Oh, good-bye, our dreams!” said Sir Huon. “It’s neither sceptre, sword, nor plough! Maybe yet it’s a bookful of learning, bound with iron clasps. There’s a chance for a splendid fortune in that sometimes.”
‘But we knew we were only speaking to comfort ourselves, and the Lady Esclairmonde, having been a woman, said so.
‘“Thur aie! Thur help us!” the Boy called. “It is round, without end, Cold Iron, four fingers wide and a thumb thick, and there is writing on the breadth of it.”
‘“Read the writing if you have the learning,” I called. The darkness had lifted by then, and the owl was out over the fern again.
‘He called back, reading the runes on the iron:
“Few can see
Further forth
Than when the child
Meets the Cold Iron.”