'
'Tell them about the marching, Parnesius. Few people
nowadays walk from end to end of this country,' said Puck.
'The greater their loss. I know nothing better than the
Long March when your feet are hardened. You begin
after the mists have risen, and you end, perhaps, an hour
after sundown.'
'And what do you have to eat?' Dan asked promptly.
'Fat bacon, beans, and bread, and whatever wine
happens to be in the rest-houses. But soldiers are born
grumblers. Their very first day out, my men complained
of our water-ground British corn. They said it wasn't so
filling as the rough stuff that is ground in the Roman
ox-mills. However, they had to fetch and eat it.'
'Fetch it? Where from?' said Una.
'From that newly invented water-mill below the Forge.'
'That's Forge Mill - our Mill!' Una looked at Puck.
'Yes; yours,' Puck put in. 'How old did you think it was?'
'I don't know. Didn't Sir Richard Dalyngridge talk
about it?'
'He did, and it was old in his day,' Puck answered.
'Hundreds of years old.'
'It was new in mine,' said Parnesius. 'My men looked
at the flour in their helmets as though it had been a nest of
adders.
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