The Field of Clover | Page 2

answer they huddled tremblingly across the threshold; but so
soon as they saw the fire burning on the hearth, they yelped all together
like a pack of hounds, and, throwing themselves face forwards into the
hot embers, began ravenously to lap up the flames. They lapped and
lapped, and the more they lapped the more the fire sank away and died.
Then with their flickering finger-tips they stirred the hot logs and coals,
burrowing after the thin tapes and swirls of vanishing flame, and
fetching them out like small blue eels still wriggling for escape.
After each blue wisp had been gulped down, they sipped and sucked at
their fingers for any least tricklet of flavour that might be left; and at
the last seemed more famished than when they began.
'More, more, O wise Noodle, give us more!' they cried; and Noodle
threw the last of his fuel on the embers.

They breathed round it, fanning it into a great blaze that leaped and
danced up to the rafters; then they fell on, till not a fleck or a flake of it
was left. Noodle, seeing them still famished, broke up a stool and threw
that on the hearth. And again they flared it with their breath and
gobbled off the flame. When the stool was finished he threw in the
table, then the dresser, and after that the oak-chest and the
window-seat.
Still they feasted and were not fed. Noodle fetched an axe, and broke
down the door; then he wrenched up the boards from the floor, and
pulled the beams and rafters out of the ceiling; yet, even so, his guests
were not to be satisfied.
'I have nothing left,' he said, 'but the house itself; but since you are still
hungry you shall be welcome to it!'
He scattered the fire that remained upon the hearth, and threw it out and
about the room; and as he ran forth to escape, up against all the walls
and right through the roof rose a great crackling sheaf of flame. In the
midst of the fire, Noodle could see his seven guests lying along on their
bellies, slopping their hands in the heat, and lapping up the flames with
their tongues. 'Surely,' he thought, 'I have given them enough to eat at
last!'
After a while all the fire was eaten away, and only the black and
smouldering ruins were left. Day came coldly to light, and there sat
Noodle, without a home in the world, watching with considerate eye
his seven guests finishing their inordinate repast.
They all rose to their feet together, and came towards him bowing; as
they approached he felt the heat of their bodies as it had been seven
furnaces.
'Enough, O wise Noodle!' said they, 'we have had enough!' 'That,'
answered Noodle, 'is the least thing left me to wonder at. Go your ways
in peace; but first tell me, who are you?' They replied, 'We are the
Fire-eaters: far from our own land, and strangers, you have done us this
service; what, now, can we do to serve you?' 'Put me in the way of a

living,' said Noodle, 'and you will do me the greatest service of all.'
Then the one of them who seemed to be chief took from his finger a
ring having for its centre a great firestone, and threw it into the snow,
saying, 'Wait for three hours till the ring shall have had time to cool,
then take it, and wear it; and whatever fortune you deserve it shall bring
you. For this ring is the sweetener of everything that it touches: bread it
turns into rich meats, water into strong wine, grief into virtue, and
labour into strength. Also, if you ever need our help, you have but to
brandish the ring, and the gleam of it will reach us, and we will be with
you wherever you may be.'
With that they bowed their top-knots to the ground and departed,
inverting themselves swiftly till only the shining print of seven pairs of
feet remained, red-hot, over the place where they had been standing.
Noodle waited for three hours; then he took up the firestone ring, and
putting it on his finger set out into the world.
At the first door he came to, he begged a crust of bread, and touching it
with the ring found it tasted like rich meats, well cooked and delicately
flavoured. Also, the water which he drew in the hollow of his hand
from a brook by the roadside tasted to him like strong wine.

[Illustration]
II
THE GALLOPING PLOUGH
Noodle went on many miles till he came near to a rich man's farm.
Though it was the middle of winter, all the fields showed crops of corn
in