‘There was none aforetime,’ said the old man. ‘A dragon was what your folk needed.’
‘They need him not. But tell me, O you that have so much wandered, and have seen many dragons, tell me how a dragon may be slain!’
‘Mind your sheep, young shepherd. Let the dragon be. Let not your sheep mourn you.’
‘They shall not. I shall slay the dragon. Only tell me how! Surely there is a way?’
‘It is a way that would lead you into his jaws, O fool, and not hurt him. Only through the roof of his mouth can a dragon be pierced and wounded. He opens not his jaws save when they are falling upon his prey. Do they not fall swiftly, O fool?’
‘O wanderer, yea. But’——
‘Could you deftly spear the roof of that great mouth, O prey, in that little time?’
‘Yea, surely, if so the dragon would perish.’
The old man laughed. ‘So would the dragon perish, truly; but so only. So would be heard what few ears have heard—the cry that a dragon utters as he is slain. But so only.’ And he went his way northward.
From that day on, Thol did not watch his sheep very much. They, on the other hand, spent most of their time in watching him. They rather thought he was mad, standing in that odd attitude and ever lunging his crook up at one of the nodding boughs of that ash tree.