Part 4 (1/2)

The priest Emilius smiled. ”My son,” he said kindly, ”these things are foolish and lead to nothing. If you will stay with us and help to tend our flocks, you shall learn of our G.o.ds, and live as we do, sharing our work and our play. But unless you obey our law we cannot let you stay. The G.o.ds are not pleased when strangers come into their sacred places.

”The founder of our city is as a kind father who watches us and sees what we do, whether it is good or whether it is evil. Our children are his children, and our fortunes are his care, as they were when he was alive and ruled his people wisely as a father. This is why we honor him. Will you stay with us and be our herd boy?”

The lad stood up, his staff in one hand, the other in the loop of the wolf's collar. ”We owe the shepherd our lives,” he said, with his proud young head erect. ”We will go back to him and serve him until we are men.

When I am a man, I think I will found a city of my own.”

His brother laughed. In a flash the lad turned on him and knocked him down. Emilius caught him by the shoulder.

”My boy,” he said sternly, ”there must be no quarreling on a holiday. Go back to your own place, for you are right to cherish your foster father.

In good or bad fortune, in all places and at all times, it is right to return kindness for kindness, to show reverence to the old who have cared for the young.”

The villagers, puzzled, curious and a little afraid, watched the two wild figures and their strange companion move away into the long shadows of the woodlands. They did not come back when any one could see them, but about a week later there was found at the door of the priest a basket woven roughly but not unskillfully of the bark of a tree, lined with fresh leaves and filled with wild honey and chestnuts.

VI

BOUNDARY LINES

The boy with the pet wolf did not come again to the village where he had first seen a holiday feast and heard what religion was, but he saw a great deal of it for all that. His brother never cared to go back and seemed to take no interest in what he had seen.

Pero, one of the shepherds, while out looking for stray lambs on the hills, met the youngster and his wolf coming down with two of the woolly black-faced truants. They had been hunting, the boy said, and had come across these lambs far up on the heights where lambs had no business to be, and brought them back. When the shepherd asked the lad his name, he said the Cub was as good a name as any. The shepherd was an old man and had seen many queer things in his life and heard of queerer ones. He had found that most frightful stories, when one came to know the truth of them, were some quite natural incident made large in the eyes of a frightened man. This boy might, of course, be a wood demon, and his wolf might be another, servants of some evil power, but the shepherd had never seen any such beings and he did not know how they were supposed to look.

When he offered the Cub a piece of his bannock, made with salt and water and meal and cooked on a hot stone, it was accepted and eaten, and Pincho the wolf ate some of it also. Pincho would eat almost anything. But that ought to prove that they were no devils, for if they were they would not have eaten the salt.

Pero was a little lame from a fall he had had several years ago, although he got about more nimbly than some younger men. He found the help of this wild youth and his wilder companion very convenient at times. After awhile he began to see that the Cub was very curious about the customs of the Sabine village. He did not ask many questions, but he would listen as long as Pero would talk. Many a long still hour the two spent, on the gra.s.s while the sheep grazed, or coming slowly down the slope toward the village at nightfall, but always, when they came near the village gate, Pero would look around presently and find that he was alone.

The first time that Pero noticed this curiosity was one day when they were high above the village so that they could look down on a level stretch of land where the men were marking out a new field. Boundary lines were very important with any people as soon as they stopped wandering from place to place and settled down to work the same land, year after year. Of course, it takes more than one season to make any plot of ground produce all it can, and no man cares to do a year's work of which he gets none of the benefit; there must be a clear understanding on the subject of the boundary.

In the beginning there were no writings, or deeds, or public records to mark the line of a farm, and the only way to protect property rights was by ceremonies which would make people remember the boundary lines, and the landmarks which it was a horrible crime to move.

Pero began by explaining that every house of the village had to be separated from every other house by at least two and one half feet. As each house was a sort of family temple, the home of the spirits of the ancestors of that family; naturally n.o.body but these spirits had any right there. Two families could not occupy the same house any more than two persons could occupy the same place. On the same plan, each field was enclosed by a narrow strip of ground never touched by the plow or walked on or otherwise used. This was the property of the G.o.d of boundaries, Terminus.

The boundary line of each field was marked by a furrow, drawn at the time the field was marked out for the village or the individual owner. At certain times, this furrow would be plowed again, the owners chanting hymns and offering sacrifices. On this line the men were now placing the landmarks they called the _termini_. The _terminus_ was a wooden pillar, or the trunk of a small tree, set up firmly in the soil. In its planting certain ceremonies were observed.

First a hole was dug, and the post was set up close by, wreathed with a garland of gra.s.ses and flowers. Then a sacrifice of some sort was offered-in this case a lamb-and the blood ran down into the hole. In the hole were placed also grain, cakes, fruits, a little honeycomb and some wine, and burned, live coals from the hearth fire of the home or the sacred fire of the village being ready for this. When it was all consumed the post was planted on the still warm ashes. If any man in plowing the field ran his furrow beyond the proper limit, his plowshare would be likely to strike one of these posts. If he went so far as to overturn it or move it, the penalty was death. There was really no excuse for him, for the line was plainly marked for all to see.

The Cub looked down at the solemnly marching group, the white oxen, and the setting of the posts with bright and interested eyes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”I have seen something like this before,” he said]

”I have seen something like this before,” he said. ”Everywhere it is death to move a landmark. In some places not posts but stones are used. The dark people across the river say that he who moves his neighbor's landmark is hated by the G.o.ds and his house shall disappear. His land shall not produce fruits, his sons and grandsons shall die without a roof above their heads, and in the end there shall be none left of his blood. Hail, rust and the dog-star shall destroy his harvests, and his limbs shall become sore and waste away.”

Pero stared in astonishment. ”Where did you hear all that?” he asked.

”When I was younger I ran away and crossed the river,” said the Cub calmly. ”They are strange people over there, not like your people. They go down to the sea in boats. I went in a boat also, but I did not like it.