ubtle plan of his which was more profound than merely to avoid all
that had been done before; and he commanded a blacksmith, and the
blacksmith made him a pickaxe.

Now there was great rejoicing at the rumour of Alderic's quest, for
all folk knew that he was a cautious man, and they deemed that he
would succeed and enrich the world, and they rubbed their hands in the
cities at the thought of largesse; and there was joy among all men in
Alderic's country, except perchance among the lenders of money, who
feared they would soon be paid. And there was rejoicing also because
men hoped that when the Gibbelins were robbed of their hoard, they
would shatter their high-built bridge and break the golden chains that
bound them to the world, and drift back, they and their tower, to the
moon, from which they had come and to which they rightly belonged.
There was little love for the Gibbelins, though all men envied their
hoard.

So they all cheered, that day when he mounted his dragon, as though he
was already a conqueror, and what pleased them more than the good that
they hoped he would do to the world was that he scattered gold as he
rode away; for he would not need it, he said, if he found the
Gibbelins' hoard, and he would not need it more if he smoked on the
Gibbelins' table.

When they heard that he had rejected the advice of those that gave it,
some said that the knight was mad, and others said he was greater than
those what gave the advice, but none appreciated the worth of his
plan.

He reasoned thus: for centuries men had been well advised and had gone
by the cleverest way, while the Gibbelins came to expect them to come
by boat and to look for them at the door whenever their larder was
empty, even as a man looketh for a snipe in a marsh; but how, said
Alderic, if a snipe should sit in the top of a tree, and would men
find him there? Assuredly never! So Alderic decided to swim the river
and not to go by the door, but to pick his way into the tower through
the stone. Moreover, it was in his mind to work below the level of the
ocean, the river (as Homer knew) that girdles the world, so that as
soon as he made a hole in the wall the water should pour in,
confounding the Gibbelins, and flooding the cellars, rumoured to be
twenty feet in depth, and therein he would dive for emeralds as a
diver dives for pearls.

And on the day that I tell of he galloped away from his home
scattering largesse of gold, as I have said, and p