A great many women, as they watched them pass, called down blessings on the head of Endymion Leer; adding that it was a pity that he was not Mayor and High Seneschal. And several rough-looking men scowled ominously at Ranulph. But Mother Tibbs, the half-crazy old washerwoman, who, in spite of her forty summers danced more lightly than any maiden, and was, in consequence, in great request as a partner at those tavern dances that played so great a part in the life of the masses in Lud-in-the-Mist--crazy, disreputable, Mother Tibbs, with her strangely noble innocent face, tossed him a nosegay and cried in her sing-song penetrating voice, "Cockadoodle doo! Cockadoodle doo! The little master's bound for the land where the eggs are all gold!" But no one ever paid any attention to what Mother Tibbs might say. * * * * * Nothing worth mentioning occurred during their journey to Swan; except the endless pleasant things of the country in summer. There were beech spinneys, wading up steep banks through their own dead leaves; fields all blurred with meadow-sweet and sorrel; brown old women screaming at their goats; acacias in full flower, and willows blown by the wind into white blossom. From time to time, terrestrial comets--the blue flash of a kingfisher, the red whisk of a fox--would furrow and thrill the surface of the earth with beauty. And in the distance, here and there, standing motionless and in complete silence by the flowing Dapple, were red-roofed villages--the least vain of all fair things, for they never looked at their own reflection in the water, but gazed unblinkingly at the horizon. And there were ruined castles covered with ivy--the badge of the old order, clinging to its own; and into the ivy doves dived, seeming to leave in their wake a trail of amethyst, just as a clump of bottle-green leaves is shot with purple by the knowledge that it hides violets. And the round towers of the castles looked as if they were so firmly encrusted in the sky that, to get to their other side, one would have to hew out a passage through the celestial marble. And the sun would set, and then our riders could watch the actual process of colour fading from the world. Was that tree still really green, or was it only that they were remembering how a few seconds ago it had been green? And the nymph whom all travellers pursue and none has ever yet caught--the white high-road, glimmered and beckoned to them through the dusk.