Tales of the Long Bow
tening out the advancing force as under a pavement produced by a shower of paving-stones. It is asserted that some of the countrymen cunning in woodcraft, in the service of the Long Bow, had contrived to fit up a tree as a colossal catapult; calculating how to bend back the boughs and sometimes even the trunks to the breaking-point, and gaining a huge and living resilience with their release. If this story is true, it is certainly an appropriate conclusion to the career of the Long Bow and a rather curious fulfilment of the visionary vaunt of Parson White, when he said that the bows would be big enough for giants, and that the maker of the bows was God."
"Yes," interrupted the excitable White, "and do you know what he said to me when I first said it?"
"What who said when you said what?" asked Hood patiently.
"I mean that fellow Hunter," replied the clergyman. "That varnished society doctor turned politician. Do you know what he said when I told him we would get our bows from God?"
Owen Hood paused in the act of lighting a cigar.
"Yes," he said grimly. "I believe I can tell
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