Whoever the visitor was, he was shown into another room, and Ranulph presently forgot all his troubles and almost lost the consciousness of his surroundings, as the harp sang under his hand. He began to put into words a song which had been haunting him for days,--a ballad of a captive knight who spent seven long years in Fairyland, but in spite of all that the Fairy Queen's enchantment could do, never forgot his own people. Many of the popular romances of the time were fairy-tales full of magic spells, giants, caverns within the hills, witches and wood-folk hoofed and horned like Pan, sea-monsters, palaces which appeared and vanished like moon-shine. When they were sung to the harp-music of a troubadour who knew his work, they seemed very real. "That is a good song," said a stranger who had come in so quietly that Ranulph did not see him. "Did you find it in Spain?" Ranulph stood up and bowed with the grace that had not left him in all his wandering life. "No," he said, his dark eyes glinting with laughter, "I learned it in the Grasshoppers' Library. I beg your pardon, master,--that is a saying we have in Provence. You will guess the meaning. A learned physician found me there, studying diligently though perhaps not over-profitably upon a hillside." "Not bad at all," said the stranger, sitting down by Ranulph in the window and running over the melody on the harp. His fingers swept the strings in a confident power that showed him a master-musician, and he began a song so full of wonder, mystery and sweetness that Ranulph listened spellbound. Neither of them knew that for centuries after they sat there singing in a ruined Roman tower, the song would be known to all the world as the legend of Parzifal. "I too have studied in the Grasshoppers' Library," said the singer, "but I found in an ancient book among the infidels in Spain this tale of a cup of enchantment, and made use of it. I think that it is one of those songs which do not die, but travel far and wide in many disguises, and end perhaps in the Church. You are one of us, are you not?" "I am a street singer," Ranulph answered, "a jongleur--a jester. I make songs for this,"--he took up his battered rote and hummed a camp-chorus. "Do you mean to say that you play like that--on that?" asked the other. "Your studies must have led you indeed to Fairyland. You ought to go to England. The Plantagenets are friendly to us troubadours, and the English are a merry people, who delight in songs and the hearing of tales." Ranulph did not answer. Going to England and going to Fairyland were not in the same class of undertaking. Fairyland might be just over the border of the real world, but it cost money to cross the seas. Tomaso came in just then, his deep-set eyes twinkling. "It is all right," he said, nodding to the troubadour.