I saw the dark green of the earth shining wet, the faint, ineffable green of the dawn, and between them spread a veil of silvery mist. Down in the hollow the Outliers were all astir; rearward two lines of men moved toward the Gap. I saw them disappear in the willows and emerge again in the stream rounding the point of the Ledge. They walked mid-thigh in the turbid water and braced themselves against the force of its running. I saw the lines bend and right themselves like the young willows. These were the Far-Folk moving under guard toward Leaping Water. Below us as we came down the knoll were Mancha, Prassade, Noche and some others, with one in their midst whom, as they turned and looked toward us expectantly, I recognized as Ravenutzi. He looked dry, I thought, and stripped. His glance, which took me dully, when at last it was aware of me, appeared to turn inward for an instant as if to call that old excluding charm of personality. I felt it flicker and expire. But all that group continuing to look toward us curiously as we went down, I enquired of Trastevera what it meant. “It is Herman,” she said. “They wait for him. Mancha has asked if he would like to go a day’s journey with them.” “He will go,” I answered for him, for I knew at once whither that journey tended, and what they would find at the end of it. To this day I do not know what prompted Mancha to invite him. Whether he thought the opportunity due to him who had first gone on the trail of that unhappy girl. Whether he had some inkling of Herman’s state of mind, and divined in him an excusing understanding of his own hopeless infatuation, I do not know. At any rate he would not set out on that day’s business without Herman. That was how we learned what happened in the Place of Caves, half a day beyond Windy Covers, and as much as was ever known of what had occurred between Ravenutzi and the Maiden Ward, no maid by now, and in a more inviolable wardship. They were afoot nearly all of that day, for besides having far to go, the men were stiff with battle. They traveled in this order—first Ravenutzi, limping a little, and Mancha stumbling close upon his heels. Neither of these spoke a word more than necessary the whole of that going. Then came Prassade, who groaned at times and made a gesture with his hands as though his heart were torn out of him and he saw it there in the trail and trampled on it with his feet. Next Noche, muttering in his beard and seeming at times to rehearse the incidents of battle, lifting and hugging somewhat in his arms and shaking his huge shoulders. After these came Herman and the men, among whom was that one who, following the tall woman, had found the smith and betrayed the Far-Folk to capture.