This house seemed to be a place
of business because from an iron fastened to the front of it hung a
board on which was painted an open boat, high at the prow and stern,
with a tall beak fashioned to the likeness of a dragon's head and round
shields all down the rail.
While I was staring at this sign and wondering emptily what kind of a
boat it was and of what nation were the folk who had sailed in her, a
man came down the garden path and leaned upon the gate, staring in turn
at me. He was old and strange-looking, being clad in a rusty gown with
a hood to it that was pulled over his head, so that I could only see a
white, peaked beard and a pair of brilliant black eyes which seemed to
pierce me as a shoemaker's awl pierces leather.
"What do you, young man," he asked in a high thin voice, "cumbering my
gate with those nags of yours? Would you sell that mail you have on the
pack-horse? If so I do not deal in such stuff, though it seems good of
its kind. So get on with it elsewhere."
"Nay, sir," I answered, "I have naught to sell who in this hive of
traders seek one bee and cannot find him.
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