Page:Oswald Bastable and Others - Nesbit.djvu/406

356 amazement, too much 'struck of a heap,' as he told his wife afterwards, to follow the new bird and finish off their quarrel in the air.

'Oh, how grand it is to be an eagle!' said Muscadel, sailing on widespread wings; and just as he said it an arrow caught him under the left wing. It hurt horribly. 'What a powerful thing an arrow is!' he said. 'Dear me, how it hurts! I wish I was an arrow.' So he was one, but he was an arrow in the quiver of a very stupid bowman, who shot next day at a buzzard and missed it. So the arrow, which was Muscadel, lodged high in an oak-tree, and the stupid bowman could not get it down again.

'I don't like being a slave to a mere bow,' said Muscadel; 'I'll be a bow myself.'

But when he was a bow the archer who owned him hurt his bow-back so in fitting him with a new string that he got very cross, and said:

'This is worse slavery than the other. I want to be an archer.'

So he was an archer. And as it happened he was one of the King's archers. The magic jewel was round his arm like a bracelet, and no one saw it, for he kept it hidden up his arm under the sleeve of his buff coat.