Mr. Norton laughed.  “Can’t you think of anything farther back than that, Olly?  It would take a great many grandfathers, and grandfathers’ grandfathers, to get back to the time when the story of Beowulf was made.  And here am I telling it to you just in the same way as fathers used to tell it to their children a thousand years ago.”

“I suppose the children liked it so, they wouldn’t let their fathers forget it,” said Milly.  “And then when they grew up they told it to their children.  I shall tell it to my children when I grow up.  I think I shall tell it to Katie to-morrow.”

“Father,” said Olly, “did Beowulf die—­ever?”

“Yes.  When he was quite an old man he had another great fight with a dragon, who was guarding a cave full of golden treasure on the sea-shore; and though he killed the dragon, the dragon gave him a terrible wound, so that when his friends came to look for him they found him lying all but dead in the cave.  He was just able to tell them to make a great mound of earth over him when he was dead, on a high rock close by, that sailors might see it from their ships and think of him when they saw it, and then he died.  And when he was dead they carried him up to the rock, and there they burned his body, and then they built up a great high mound of earth, and they put Beowulf’s bones inside, and all the treasure from the dragon’s cave.  They were ten days building up the mound.  Then when it was all done they rode around it weeping and chanting sorrowful songs, and at last they left him there, saying as they went away that never should they see so good a king or so true a master any more.  And for hundreds of years afterwards, when the sailors out at sea saw the high mound rising on its point of rock, they said one to another, ‘There is Beowulf’s Mount,’ and they began to tell each other of Beowulf’s brave deeds—­how he lived and how he died, and how he fought with Grendel and the wild sea dragons.  There, now, I have told you all I know about Beowulf,” said Mr. Norton, getting up and turning the children off his knee, “and if it isn’t somebody else’s turn now it ought to be.”

“Aunt Emma!  Aunt Emma!” shouted Olly, who was so greedy for stories that he could almost listen all day long without being tired.

But Aunt Emma only smiled through her spectacles and pointed to the window.  The children ran to look out, and they could hardly believe their eyes when they saw that it had actually stopped raining, and that over the tree-tops was a narrow strip of blue sky, the first they had seen for three whole days.

“Oh you nice blue sky!” exclaimed Milly, dancing up and down before the window with a beaming face.  “Mind you stay there and get bigger.  We’ll get on our hats presently and come out to look at you.  Oh! there’s John Backhouse coming down the hill with the dogs.  Mother, may we go up ourselves and ask Becky and Tiza to come to tea?”

“But Aunt Emma must tell us her story first,” persisted Olly, who hated being cheated out of a story by anything or anybody.  “She promised.”