But the pirates
conquered the country, and for centuries Weland was a
most important God. He had temples everywhere - from
Lincolnshire to the Isle of Wight, as he said - and his
sacrifices were simply scandalous. To do him justice, he
preferred horses to men; but men or horses, I knew that
presently he'd have to come down in the world - like the
other Old Things. I gave him lots of time - I gave him
about a thousand years - and at the end of 'em I went into
one of his temples near Andover to see how he prospered.
There was his altar, and there was his image, and
there were his priests, and there were the congregation,
and everybody seemed quite happy, except Weland and
the priests. In the old days the congregation were
unhappy until the priests had chosen their sacrifices; and so
would you have been. When the service began a priest
rushed out, dragged a man up to the altar, pretended to
hit him on the head with a little gilt axe, and the man fell
down and pretended to die. Then everybody shouted:
"A sacrifice to Weland! A sacrifice to Weland!"'
'And the man wasn't really dead?' said Una.
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