Tressilian, musing what the upshot of this mummery was to be, yet satisfied there was to be some serious result, by the confidence with which the boy had put himself in his power, suffered himself to be conducted to that side of the little thicket of gorse and brushwood which was farthest from the circle of stones, and there sat down; and as it occurred to him that, after all, this might be a trick for stealing his horse, he kept his hand on the boy’s collar, determined to make him hostage for its safety.

“Now, hush and listen,” said Dickie, in a low whisper; “you will soon hear the tack of a hammer that was never forged of earthly iron, for the stone it was made of was shot from the moon.”  And in effect Tressilian did immediately hear the light stroke of a hammer, as when a farrier is at work.  The singularity of such a sound, in so very lonely a place, made him involuntarily start; but looking at the boy, and discovering, by the arch malicious expression of his countenance, that the urchin saw and enjoyed his slight tremor, he became convinced that the whole was a concerted stratagem, and determined to know by whom, or for what purpose, the trick was played off.

Accordingly, he remained perfectly quiet all the time that the hammer continued to sound, being about the space usually employed in fixing a horse-shoe.  But the instant the sound ceased, Tressilian, instead of interposing the space of time which his guide had required, started up with his sword in his hand, ran round the thicket, and confronted a man in a farrier’s leathern apron, but otherwise fantastically attired in a bear-skin dressed with the fur on, and a cap of the same, which almost hid the sooty and begrimed features of the wearer.  “Come back, come back!” cried the boy to Tressilian, “or you will be torn to pieces; no man lives that looks on him.”  In fact, the invisible smith (now fully visible) heaved up his hammer, and showed symptoms of doing battle.

But when the boy observed that neither his own entreaties nor the menaces of the farrier appeared to change Tressilian’s purpose, but that, on the contrary, he confronted the hammer with his drawn sword, he exclaimed to the smith in turn, “Wayland, touch him not, or you will come by the worse!—­the gentleman is a true gentleman, and a bold.”

“So thou hast betrayed me, Flibbertigibbet?” said the smith; “it shall be the worse for thee!”

“Be who thou wilt,” said Tressilian, “thou art in no danger from me, so thou tell me the meaning of this practice, and why thou drivest thy trade in this mysterious fashion.”

The smith, however, turning to Tressilian, exclaimed, in a threatening tone, “Who questions the Keeper of the Crystal Castle of Light, the Lord of the Green Lion, the Rider of the Red Dragon?  Hence!—­avoid thee, ere I summon Talpack with his fiery lance, to quell, crush, and consume!” These words he uttered with violent gesticulation, mouthing, and flourishing his hammer.