The new Vagrant arrived the next day and, being on my way to the den, I saw him come, along the road from the west. He was in his thirties, I judged, a powerfully built man, with red hair and a beard. He carried an ash stick and the usual small pack on his back, and he was singing a song, quite tunefully, as he strode along. He saw me, and stopped singing.

‘Boy,’ he said, ‘what is the name of this place?’

‘It’s called Whereton,’ I told him.

‘Whereton,’ he repeated. ‘Ah, loveliest village of the plain; here is no anguish, here no pain. Do you know me, boy?’

I shook my head. ‘No.’

‘I am king of this land. My wife was the queen of a rainy country, but I left her weeping. My name is Ozymandias. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.’

He talked nonsense, but at least he talked, and the words themselves could be understood. They sounded a bit like poetry, and I remembered the name Ozymandias from a poem which I had found in a book, one of the dozen or so on the shelf in the parlour. As he went on towards the village, I followed him. Glancing back, he said:

‘Dost follow me, boy? Wouldst be my page? Alas, alas. The fox has his hole, and the bird shelters in the great leafy oak, but the son of man has not where to lay his head. Have you no business of your own, then?’

‘Nothing important.’

‘Nothing is important, true, but how does a man find Nothing? Where shall he seek it? I tell you, could I find Nothing, I would be not king but emperor. Who dwells in the House, this day and hour?’

I assumed he was talking about the Vagrant house.

‘Only one,’ I said. ‘I don’t know his name.’

‘His name shall be Star. And yours?’

‘Will Parker.’

‘Will is a good name. What trade does your father follow, Will, for you wear too fine a cloth to be a labourer’s son?’

‘He keeps the mill.’

‘And this the burden of his song for ever seems to be: I care for nobody, no, not I, and nobody cares for me. Have you many friends, Will?’

‘No. Not many.’

‘A good answer. For he that proclaims many friends declares that he has none.’

I said, on an impulse which surprised me when I reflected on it:

‘In fact, I don’t have any. I had one, but he was Capped a month ago.’

He stopped in the road, and I did so, too. We were on the outskirts of the village, opposite the Widow Ingold’s cottage. The Vagrant looked at me keenly.

‘No business, of importance anyway, and no friend. One who talks and walks with Vagrants. How old are you, Will?’

‘Thirteen.’

‘You are small for it. So you will take the Cap next summer?’

‘Yes.’