scores will then be settled in that place." Glyndwyr meditated
afterward, very evilly. "Sire," he said without prelude, "I do not
recognize Richard of Bordeaux. You have garnered much in travelling!"

"Why, look you," Richard returned, "I have garnered so much that I do
not greatly care whether this scheme succeed or no. With age I begin
to contend even more indomitably that a wise man will consider nothing
very seriously. You barons here believe it an affair of importance who
may chance to be the King of England, say, this time next year; you
take sides between Henry and me. I tell you frankly that neither of
us, that no man in the world, by reason of innate limitations, can
ever rule otherwise than abominably, or, ruling, can create anything
save discord. Nor can I see how this matters either, since the
discomfort of an ant-village is not, after all, a planet-wrecking
disaster. No, Owain, if the planets do indeed sing together, it is,
depend upon it, to the burden of _Fools All_. For I am as liberally
endowed as most people; and when I consider my abilities, my
performances, my instincts, and so on, quite aloofly, as I would
appraise those of another person, I can only shrug: and to conceive
that common-sense, much less Omnipotence, would ever concern itself
about the actions of a creature so entirely futile is, to me at least,
impossible."

"I have known the thought," said Owain,--"though rarely since I found
the Englishwoman that was afterward my wife, and never since my son,
my Gruffyd, was murdered by a jesting man. He was more like me than
the others, people said.... You are as yet the empty scabbard,
powerless alike for help or hurt. Ey, hate or love must be the sword,
sire, that informs us here, and then, if only for a little while, we
are as gods."

"Pardie! I have loved as often as Salomon, and in fourteen kingdoms."

"We of Cymry have a saying, sire, that when a man loves par amours the
second time he may safely assume that he has never been in love at
all."

"--And I hate Henry of Lancaster as I do the devil."

"I greatly fear," said Owain with a sigh, "lest it may be your
irreparable malady to hate nothing, not even that which you dislike.
No, you consider things with both eyes open, with an unmanly
rationality: whereas Sire Henry views all matters with that heroic
squint which came into your family from Poictesme."

"Be off with your dusty scandals!" said Richard, laughing.

So then Glyndwyr ro