“And furthermore,” the King continued, “if my race has driven out the Gaelic race, then I think the Queen of Orkney’s subjects have a good reason too.” Merlyn scratched his chin in the middle of the beard, with the hand which held the reins, and pondered. “Uther,” he said at length, “your lamented father, was an aggressor. So were his predecessors the Saxons, who drove the Old Ones away. But if we go on living backward like that, we shall never come to the end of it. The Old Ones themselves were aggressors, against the earlier race of the copper hatchets, and even the hatchet fellows were
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