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Updated: May 17, 2025
This was a great wonder to Umpl and his people. A knife which would not break, as their flint ones did, but bent and could be pounded straight again, was exceedingly odd. They even showed Umpl a piece of copper which had been brought to the village in a large lump by some young men from a far country, and explained how the knife had been hammered out with stones. This gave Umpl an idea.
Down it came, crashing through the great limbs of the trees beyond Umpl and Sptz with a huge rushing roar, and when it struck the earth the ground trembled for half a mile around, especially as it glanced from a ledge after diving deep in the soil, and came leaping out of the soil again only to fall with a thud a rod or two away. It is hard to say whether Umpl or Sptz was the more frightened.
Just why it seemed necessary for Umpl and his people to go to war with anybody may not be clear. They were living very happily in their village on the lake.
Instead it seems to call to mind the clang of hammers on helmet or anvil, or shield or tool, according to whether it is a time of war or peace and in the Iron Age there was indeed very little of peace that did not look a great deal more like war. In the Forest, many times as far from the land where Umpl lived as one could see from the tallest tree top, there lived a boy a chief's son.
Now see!" Tying to it one end of the long thong he always carried, Umpl flung the iron mass down on the head of a wolf that was trying to leap up within reach. The animal fell, and his mates sprang on him, as wolves will, and ate him up. Five times Umpl did it before the rest began to take warning, and even then a pretended tumble brought them back and three more fell.
Umpl had his own work. Outside, hare-catching kept him busy. It is wonderful how many a family can eat when it tries hard, and when deer are scarce, or the father is a long way off on a hunt and there is no meat in the kitchen. Then he had to dig up certain juicy roots that were good when he could find them.
In no time, more dead leaves were heaped around the light flame; with a shout of joy Umpl rushed to a windfall and brought an armful of wood, and soon a royal fire was sending out light and heat, beautifully nickering upward among the trees. Umpl knew what to do now as well as any one. He hunted up two pitchy sticks and set them both alight.
Elsewhere things might be better. They could not be worse. And he would go with them, taking Sptz, who could cook well, and the Iron Star, which would bring them luck. It seemed a very good idea, especially to youths who had none of their own; and they agreed to form a band and go, if Umpl first would prove the luck of the Star. The youth nodded, and held up his club. "This was made from it.
The rest ran back to a wider circle, and before they got over their scare Umpl was on the ground and back again, with his bow and quiver of arrows; and that was the beginning of the end of that wolf-pack, while every youth in the trees now believed in the Star. They found the Iron Star was heavy.
Their cattle were fat; their fields of that curious grass through which Umpl had waded before he knew what it was good for were sure to harvest grain enough to make bread, and Sptz had found that grain-bread was as much better than acorn-bread as sponge cake is better than gingerbread; although both gingerbread and acorn- bread are good enough for any one, when one cannot get anything better.
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