It is a thick, heavy backsword, eighteen inches long, with a bevel where the point should be, worn at the waist in a half-scabbard of wood, and used for digging as well as killing.

Pa startled me with his sudden stern tone. “They could! If men don't get too grabby for every smitch of land for their cattle.”

Portsmouth is to the east of Southampton.

Poor Arabs wondered why I had no mare; I forbore to puzzle them by incomprehensible talk of hardening myself, or confess I would rather walk than ride for sparing of animals: