Twice in the course of the autumn the dragon came down the hill; but when the watchman sounded the alarm Thol did not go forth to meet him. He was not what his flock thought him.
He had now exchanged his crook for a spear—a straight well-seasoned sapling of oak, with a long sharp head of flint. With this, day by day, hour after hour, he lunged up at the boughs of fruit-trees. His flock, deploring what seemed to them mania, could not but admire his progressive skill. Rarely did he fail now in piercing whatever plum or apple he aimed at.
When winter made bare the branches, it was at the branches that Thol aimed his thrusts. His accuracy was unerring now. But he had yet to acquire the trick of combining the act of transfixion with the act of leaping aside. Else would he perish even in victory.
Spring came. As usual, her first care was to put blossoms along the branches of such almond trees as were nearest to the marshes.
The ever side-leaping Thol pricked off any little single blossom that he chose.
Spring was still active in the homeland when, one day, a little while before sunset, the watchers of the hill blew their horns. There came from all quarters the usual concourse of young and old, to watch the direction of the dragon and to keep out of it. Down came the familiar great beast, the never-ageing dragon, picking his way into the green valley. And he saw an unwonted sight there. He saw somebody standing quite still on the nearer bank of the stream; a red-haired young person, holding a spear. About this young person he formed a theory which had long been held by certain sheep.
Little wonder that the homelanders also formed that theory! Little wonder that they needed no further proof of it when, deaf to the cries of entreaty that they uttered through the evening air, Thol stood his ground!
Slowly, as though to give the wretched young lunatic a chance, the dragon advanced.
But quickly, very terribly and quickly, when he was within striking distance, he reared his neck up. An instant later there rang through the valley—there seemed to rend the valley—a single screech, unlike anything that its hearers had ever heard.