"I blame you not, friend," said Polaris. "But other days bring other fortunes. I do not think that I shall stay long in your prison. And it comes to me also that your king best had let this party depart his land in peace, else the next turn of the wheel may bring to him that which he least desires. And I think that you may have a hand in that turn, Oleric." "Are you a prophet, my brother?" exclaimed Oleric, searching the face of Polaris for a hidden meaning. "For if you be not one, then you have a rare spirit." "No prophet I," Polaris answered. He sprang down over the wheel and stretched his weary limbs. "Only at times, when all seems black, my heart does whisper courage, and then all things turn well. It did so just now, when I saw the lights spring up along that splendid street out there." He held up his arms and assisted Rose Emer to alight from the car. Oleric gazed at him curiously. "So you think that the wheel will turn, and that I will have a hand in it, my brother, do you?" he whispered to himself. "Perchance I shall." He swung down from his horse and cast the reins to an attendant. "What! Mordo! Where do you tarry? Here be guests for you," he shouted. They stood in the dusk under the spreading boughs of an ancient oak and waited while a tall, loosely built man, black-bearded, and clad in the armor of gold that was the badge of power in Maeronica, came down from a pillared porch on the other side of the court and shambled across. They noticed that his step was somewhat uncertain, and once or twice he stumbled as he approached. "Mordo, captain, and keeper of the king's prison house," Oleric muttered to Polaris. "He's a good fellow, but does love his wine cup exceeding well." As the prison keeper came across the stones and the grass, he shouted, and an underling ran to him, swinging a lighted globe encaged in a metal net. Mordo took the lamp and cast its rays on the party. His face was flushed, and his eyes rolled until they saw Oleric. Then his mouth gaped in a delighted grin. "Hoy! Hoy!" he exclaimed. "By the wall and the beasts and the shadows of the fathers of Ad, if it is not my old bottle-crony come sailing home again! I thought my ears had lied when I heard that voice in the dark." He set the lamp down and pitched forward, steadying himself with his hands on Oleric's shoulders. "And the same old dekkar, eh?" (A dekkar was a broad goldpiece of the coin of Maeronica.) "They said that you were gone across the black river, but I believed them not. 'Not Oleric,' I told them. 'Not so long as there is left unemptied a single one of those long-stemmed bottles in old Mordo's cellar.' And I was right, eh, old firetop? Ah! Many a glass shall clink to-night, and many a rack be made lighter when Brunar and the others come." Mordo threw his head back and laughed, a roaring gale of mirth. "Why, I was so lonely to-night that already I have cracked two flagons, just for the good wine's company."