Chapter 2

This gave Umpl an idea. Taking a flint knife he sawed off a slice of copper from the lump and with his iron war-club he hammered it out on the Iron Star and fashioned a beautiful spearhead in no time, the iron clinking merrily beneath his blows. There was a great rush around him after that. Every one who had copper wanted it worked up, and Umpl was clear-headed enough to bargain for a hut for his people and one for himself and Sptz.

Here he lived happily for many years. He owned a share in the long- horned cattle. His men were the best hunters in the village, and the copper things he made were sought for by men who came long distances. Sometimes they brought him bars of copper. After a time some one brought tin, and two pieces fell into the fire one day, along with a copper knife, and all three were melted into one and cooled in a little hollow in the ashes after the fire was out. Umpl was astonished to find that the sharp edge of this would cut like flint, yet would not bend like copper; and he began to make regular knives and spearheads of such material, finding out a way of making clay moulds and pouring the melted metal into them to harden into the right shapes. Of course these were far more valuable than the copper tools and they were sold here and there among the tribes of other peoples, and often travelled far from where they were made. Other people began to find out how to make them, and made so many that, although they still used flint knives too, yet people nowadays when speaking of that long ago time often call it the Bronze Age, because tin and copper, when melted together in a certain way, make bronze. But the Iron Star's travels were not ended.

SPARK III.

HOW THE STAR WAS CARRIED ON THE WARPATH, AND WHAT CAME OF IT.

Just why it seemed necessary for Umpl and his people to go to war with anybody may not be clear. They were living very happily in their village on the lake. Their cattle were fat; their fields of that curious grass through which Umpl had waded before he knew what it was good for were sure to harvest grain enough to make bread, and Sptz had found that grain-bread was as much better than acorn-bread as sponge cake is better than gingerbread; although both gingerbread and acorn- bread are good enough for any one, when one cannot get anything better.

Sptz had found many things in that village which were just what she wanted. For one thing, out of the long, shaggy hair of the longer- horned cattle had been found a way of spinning thread and weaving cloth in pretty patterns. Sptz could dress a deerskin beautifully, and make out of it a cloak fit for a warrior to wear, but she had never learned to weave. Still, when the other girls showed their best dresses to each other and chattered, and looked over their shoulder at Sptz in her deerskin mantle, some young man with a bracelet on his arm would be quite likely to pass by them and go straight to Sptz with strings of white and pearly beads in his hand--beads made from the shells which he had found in lake and river--and ask her to make for him a warrior's cloak. Such beads were not found every day. To have as many as a dozen strings around one's neck, and all one's sleeves trimmed with them, and enough left to weave in and out of one's glossy black hair, and to make a broad, tinkling band around each ankle--why, Sptz was a rich girl! and best of all, it was all her own earning. No one gave it to her for nothing. Her own ten fingers and round arms had won those jewels.

By-and-by some chief as wise as Umpl and as great would come from a far-off village, with the teeth of the Cave Bear on his arm, and the feather of the eagle in his hair; by his side would hang a sword of ruddy copper; in his hand would be a spear tufted with finest fur. The green branches of peace would be waved, and he would pass in peace along the plank-way from the shore; but while he talked with Umpl and the other chiefs at the council his eyes, like a wise man's, would be roving hither and yonder, learning much about this new village and its people. And there, as she would be standing modestly behind the village girls, yet a full head taller than any of them, and straight as a young pine, with the sunlight flashing on her necklaces, there he would see--Sptz.

What was to happen next she would not say, even to herself. But she worked very hard at her deerskins, and always had one in hand, pricking little holes in it in odd and fashionable patterns, into which she could rub berry stain. Sometimes she ornamented them with pictures of animals, queerly drawn, which were thought very fine. But here Umpl could beat her.

Umpl could take a great bone, and with a sharp flint and a copper knife which had been hammered until it was almost as hard as flint, he could carve on that white bone a picture of a fierce wild bull, so naturally that you would want to run away if he had not also carved a young warrior rushing down all ready to do battle with the beast. Every animal that Umpl had ever killed in the forest he had pictured out on the hardest and whitest bones he could find. They were his picture books, and he could take one in hand, perhaps a sketch of the great hairy elephant which we call the mammoth, and show it around the circle and then tell the story of that hunt. And they would look at the picture a moment and shut their eyes and seem to see it all just as it happened. Some of those carved pictures have lasted until this day, for I myself have seen them!

But after a time things became altogether too peaceful. They began to want something exciting--they could not go to the theatre, for there never had been such a thing. Just ordinary, plain hunting was not enough--it was too tame. There wasn't enough danger in it, and any boy will understand at once what I mean by that.

More than half of the good things of life owe their goodness to the very fact that danger attends them in some form,--danger of being "caught," of being "it," of being "put out" by some one on the other side; and the fun all comes from the being able, by your own quick foot, or eye, or thought, to win the game. The more you play that game the better you can play it, and when it gets too easy then you feel that it is tame, and you want something harder to win than the prize of such baby-play. We all feel this in one way or another. We always have, since long before the days of Umpl. And it is just because of this that we now know more and can do more than Umpl did or could.

But in Umpl's day there was only one thing more dangerous than the hunt for the Cave Bear. There was but one game which made a young man think, and plan, and contrive as never before to come out ahead. There was but one which brought him so much honour when he won, or which cost so much when he lost, and which he thought was for that reason so well worth playing, and that game was--the hunt for the Cave Man.

Very cunning was he. His club was heavy, his flint-edged spear was sharp. The young man who went hunting for him without first studying hard and learning from his elders as much as they could tell him was more than likely never to come back at all. Perhaps for that very reason there were not so many lads in those days as there are now who think that they "know it all" without study.

But Umpl did really know it all, for the very good reason that he had been a Cave boy himself not so very long before. So when he went out from that village at the head of his men one fine day, while the sun was shining brightly and the birds were singing, he did not neglect a single one of the many things which he had been told would bring good luck to his hunting. Every arrow was as perfect as it could be made, from feather to point. Every head of flint or bone had been tested to make sure that it was firm. Each young man had his own little sack full of bread ready baked, so that no fire by its smoke need betray them; while as to the danger because they had no fire--why, that was a part of the game. Lastly--but in Umpl's eyes the most important of all--they carried, as of old, in a sling, the Iron Star. Surely this was not the time to leave that good-luck-bringer at home, so Umpl reasoned. Thus the Star once more set out upon its travels.

Now, the errand which one goes on sometimes has a great deal to do with what he finds at the end of it. I don't mean to say that the Star had anything to do with it at all, or that it knew right from wrong. But this is certain; on its last journey Umpl was seeking only a home where he and Sptz might live and find food in a time of famine. But now he was seeking to harm people who had never even heard of him; and if bad fortune befell, the errand itself was not good enough to deserve a better.

A wise man long afterward once wrote down the words of Jesus, "They who live by the sword shall perish by the sword," and it is a good saying. Thus it happened, that, after a wild hunt through the silent forests to the northwest for many weeks, one day they found a village which was all too strong for them. It was like arousing a hornet's nest. Umpl got out of it safely enough, with an arrow hole or two here and there where they did not count. But he did not have so many to lead back home again; and the Iron Star, alas! was lost, captured by the enemy. Umpl never laid eyes on it again.

Neither did Umpl's son. But the son of Umpl's son knew all about it, as far as any one person knew; for in the long nights when the water rippled lazily up against the mossy logs beneath the huts, and the evening smoke curled upward from the after-supper fires, then was the time for stories of great marvels in the days of old; and Umpleton, as the boy was called, knew well that far in the northwest was the Star that once had made the fortune of his family. So, when he in his turn was partly grown up, he packed up a sack full of cakes, as his grandfather had done, took another full of beautiful bronze knives and trinkets which he himself had made, and the Star-club, which Umpl had never lost. With these he started off on a trading expedition. Times were better now than in the old days, and traders were more plenty.

For many weary weeks he wandered. Weeks ran into months, months became years, and still Umpleton wandered from village to village, from tribe to tribe, trading, keeping his eyes open, and asking questions from the old men. He learned many things from them, and although it was long before the days of books, yet by remembering what he heard and thinking it over he became for the time a young man whose word was worth listening to and whose opinion was worth having.

So, one evening he stopped at a chief's hut where he was known, and decided a very knotty question so wisely and justly that they asked him to tarry with them for a while. He answered them in a dreamy way, for his mind was thinking of the Star and his fruitless quest, forgetting that even thus it had brought good fortune, since it had given him knowledge.

They asked him how he made his bronze, and he showed them how. Then they in turn showed him certain small, very heavy black stones, which they used to make hot in the fire, and by placing in their pots would make the water in them boil furiously without danger of breaking the pot, as the fire was apt to do. As he looked at them it seemed to him that they were not unlike his Star-club, and, liking to try things, he raked a hot one out of the fire and began to hammer it with his club. He found he could hammer it like copper as long as it was hot, and he knew he had made a great find!

While the chief looked on in amazement, he found that by heating one he could flatten it out, then he could make small ones stick to it while hot and hammer all into one mass, then into a bar, and from that he could make an axe-head with an edge which would cut clean through a copper ring as though it was but cheese; next, when he was in a hurry to cool it off, and for that reason put it into water, he found that the metal became so hard that he had no tool which could scratch it, no bronze which it would not cut sheer through; and in all the Forestland no chief was so happy as the headman of that village! Axes that would cut wood as never axe cut before! Weapons which would not break nor grow blunt at the first blow! What treasures!

Every fragment of those heavy stones was brought to Umpleton. They dug deep into the hillside for them. They made so many tools that although both stone, copper and bronze ones were still in use yet they were used only by those who could not afford the better ones. And in some such way began what we now call the Iron Age; and at last, one joyous day, two young boys found a mass of metal so heavy that they could not lift it; and by the carvings on it Umpleton found that it was indeed the treasure of his family for which he had searched so long, and the search for which had been the cause of his present fortune. Once more the Iron Star was in the hut of the son of a Cave Man.

SPARK IV.

HOW THE STAR WENT TO THE NORTHLAND.

The Iron Age! What a ringing, resonant sound, stern and grim! There is nothing in it of the dull "tunk" of stone, or the blither "clink" of copper. Instead it seems to call to mind the clang of hammers on helmet or anvil, or shield or tool, according to whether it is a time of war or peace--and in the Iron Age there was indeed very little of peace that did not look a great deal more like war.

In the Forest, many times as far from the land where Umpl lived as one could see from the tallest tree top, there lived a boy--a chief's son. His name was Ulf, the son of Urgan, who was the son of Umpleton, who, as you will remember, was the grandson of Umpl. It was thus a very long time after Umpl's day; and yet, here is a very curious thing: Umpl had blue eyes and black eyebrows and hair; so had Ulf! Umpl had a nose with a little rise in the bridge of it, like a curve; so had Ulf! Umpl's ears had been of a longer, narrower pattern than those of his mates; Ulf had the same style of narrow ear on each side of his head; and just as Umpl thought, and dreamed a little, and planned, and looked far ahead to what he might do as the leader of a band of warriors if he could bring them to reason, instead of shooting them all with his bow and arrows when the wolves had them treed,--so now in their games Ulf was the one who did the planning. He was the one who was leader in them all. And in all the village, boy though he was, except his father, or grandfather Umpleton, no man could take a bit of iron, or of copper and make a better spearhead or a finer bracelet. He had his own small kit of tools, most of which he had made himself. He had in his father's hut the Iron Star, which served as his anvil and which he thought turned out better work than any other. And just as clearly as though he had read it in a book he knew the story of that Star, from the day it fell from the skies down to his own time. Father had told it to son, son to his son, and so on to Ulf's young day. That was the way in which people were taught history before the days of books.

This is not so strange. But is it not a most wonderful thing that just because Umpl, from the falling of the Star was led to think, and make his brain stronger and wiser than his mates, the result of it should last so long that it made a leader of a boy more than a hundred years after Umpl's day? Just think of it! Let us suppose that you were to make up your mind that you would make the most of yourself; that, when a quarrel began at school, before taking sides you would think carefully over both sides, and make sure which was the right one, and then fight for it your hardest, instead of taking up the side you happened to hear about first; and because of your doing this every day, and in every case that has two sides, just suppose that a boy should live two hundred years from now, who would be your great-great- great-great-grandson; who would be as like you as one pea is like another, and who would grow up to be a great judge of the Supreme Court, or perhaps President of the United States!

And yet, this is happening right along all around us! Just to think of it every day makes me wonder, sometimes, what my thoughts yesterday will have to do with my own many-times-great-grandson a hundred years from now. Will he have reason to be glad or sorry?

But let us get back to Ulf.

Now and then in his Forest home he heard tales of a nation still farther to the northwest; a race of wonderfully strong men who, strange to say, had yellow hair and pink cheeks. They were also terrible fighters, and no one could stand against them among all the black or brown haired tribes. Just why a band of Northmen, as they were called,--some dictionary makers spell it Norsemen,--should think it worth while to go so far inland I cannot say; but a war-party did get as far as Ulf's village on a plundering expedition, perhaps hoping to find gold.

They did not find any, but they did find Ulf, who happened to be making such a hammering that he did not hear what was going on till it was too late to run; so he did the next best thing, and fought like a wolf. Now, if there was one thing that the Northmen valued more than another it was courage, and their leader was so pleased with the lad's pluck that--after he had picked one of his arrows out of his own arm and had warded off with some trouble various lightning-like jabs of a copper knife--he directed his men to "throw a noose over that young wildcat" and bring him along, together with what other treasure they might find.

Among that treasure was the Iron Star. Not that they knew its story, but because they knew iron when they saw it, and what iron was good for. So that is how Ulf and the Star together first saw the sea shining in the sun as it lapped in and around the black ledges of a Norway fjord, as the inlets of that rocky land are called. But it was a weary journey thither.

What a strange sight was the glistening sea to Ulf, a son of the Forest! During the long march he had learned much of the language of his captors--it was somewhat like his own; so, when the leader turned on the brow of a hill and cried in a thundering cheer, "The vik! the vik!" he knew that the rockbound harbour and the end of the journey were in sight. What a harbour really was he had no idea. When the men raced up the hill he ran too, till the sight struck him dumb.

What was that broad, gleaming, heaving plain? Whoever saw earth toss up and down like that? What was that great animal creeping across it, borne onward by so many legs, to where others lay silent on the narrow strip of beach? The time came when he knew better what a longship was, and the difference between legs and oars. But now--what huge houses those were to one who had always lived in a hut! Could it be possible that one could climb up inside and find a room up above the top of another room? Ulf had never seen a stairway or a ladder in his life. And what were those creatures with shining yellow and white things in their own yellow hair, clad in robes of many colours, and some of them so very, very beautiful? He had not felt fear when he fought with the Jarl--the leader. He was afraid now, for these might be spirits!

Meanwhile, the "spirits" took a very lively interest in the slender, black-haired little thrall, as slaves were called. They were in the habit of saying what they thought in those days, and it was quite a matter of course when little Edith Fairhair declared that he was "ex- ceed-ing-ly good-looking," and that she meant to ask her father to give him to her to play with. As her father happened to be the Jarl himself, of course she got what she wanted. So Ulf came to live in Jarl Sigurd's household. It was a very great change from Forest-life, and he was just the boy to make good use of it.

For one thing, his old life had taught him how to keep his eyes and ears open and his mouth shut. Few around him knew how many, many things he thought about, in that silent black head of his. When the white-headed old man with the harp came in a great longship, with the train of a visiting jarl, and sang songs that never came to an end, songs about mighty men of other days, their wars and battles, he listened right well from his place far down the long hall where the thralls sat at suppertime.

Not one of those sagas, as they were called, did he miss. When he by daytime watched the sheep he thought of them, and told them over to himself. Thus he learned of other lands. He learned of Thor, and Odin, and the other gods which the Jarl worshipped with all his men, since they had never heard of the one true God, our Father of all. And he knew the Jarl believed that if a man was brave, and honest, and told the truth and lived a life pleasing to the gods, that pleasant things would happen to him after death. This was a much better thing to believe than to think that death was the end of everything, as they thought in the Forestland in those days. So he liked the sagas.

But Ulf the Silent was not always as silent as his name would imply. One night after supper, when the cattle had been fed, the chores were done, and the boys and girls were skipping stones on the beach together, the largest boy, Thorold, had proved that he could throw a stone the furthest, but grew quite angry because he could not make one skip along the water as many times as Ulf. He said many things that were not nice to hear, and finally cried,

"I am a freeman's son and thou art only a thrall. And I am the stronger," shaking his fist in the other's face.

"So is an ox," said Ulf, quietly, and Edith Fairhair cried out "Good!" Ulf was her thrall, and she did not like Thorold, anyway. He was too rough because he was strong, and too stupid. Then said Ulf,

"If Sigurd was Jarl only because he is strong, Thorolf would be Jarl in his stead."

Now, Thorold was the son of Thorolf, and this was more than he could stand. He sprang at Ulf without another word. But that son of the Forest had not been called a wildcat by Sigurd without reason, and when they came to the ground together it was he who was on top, and he stayed there, too, till some men came along and picked him off. Things looked black for Ulf just then.

However, it might have been worse. Thorold was not much hurt, except in his pride, and Edith Fairhair insisted that before Ulf was flogged the matter should be judged by the Jarl himself, which was perfectly proper, since Ulf belonged to his household. Thus Ulf found himself brought into the hall, the steps echoing among the rafters overhead, and along past rows of shields and spears that hung upon the wall, to where the Jarl sat at the further end, on the "high seat" as it was called. The saga-singer sat there on the low platform, and on the high-seat itself also rested the Jarl's other visitor, and through the window the rays of the setting sun glinted like flame on the helmets which each chief wore, and on the golden bosses and buckles of their armour.

Jarl Sigurd was not particularly surprised at a claim for justice, but he was surprised to see among the witnesses his own daughter, standing modestly apart lest the stranger should think ill of her, yet with her father's own calm, proud look in her eye. Then he saw Ulf, and began to understand.

The trial was brief enough, for every one told the truth, even Thorold. The Jarl heard them patiently, to the last one, then politely asked the opinion of the other chief. Now the guest, Jarl Swend, knew perfectly well that of all the sailors in longships along that land not one was more long-headed, more perfect in the art of war or in making other leaders at a council believe his was the better way, than was the man who sat by his side. So he looked at Ulf and laughed a little; then he said,