He was almost unattended. He wished to mix, as a stranger, with the crowd at the Fair, believing in this manner he would more easily become acquainted with the people from whom he wished to gather warriors. Long before he arrived at the scene of the Fair he found the country scattered with the mares and stallions of the visitors, who had journeyed there before him. As he rode down a rich glade the clang and clash of barbaric music came to his ears, a quaint city rose in sight, backed by wild and glorious hills. The walls of the city were shaped into a triangle; they bristled with spear and pike-point, standard and pennon. The one and twenty towers, rising from the walls, were hung with quaint scrolls written with the weird characters of the Ogham language, bidding all the world make merry in the assembly that Aedd the Great had founded centuries before Julius Cæsar had landed in Britain. The scent of mead came to Cormac’s nostrils as he entered the crowded labyrinths of the Fair. Great vats of it were piled just near the entrance; some of the vats had been broken open, the mead spilt upon the ground, its pungent sweetness filling the air--the famous Pictish mead brewed from heath honey, and so fragrant that Boetius believed it was brewed from flowers themselves. Beside the spilt mead some drunken Caledonian Picts were sleeping in the sunshine; their wares lay around them--brooms, brushes, and beds of heather, and soft bales of yellow heath-dyed wool, bound together by hempen ropes. Passing through a place of barter Cormac found himself amongst booths and work-shops. On every side was a continuous crush of musicians, merchants, snake-charmers, bards, and law-givers. Spinners, potters, carpenters, workers in gold and silver cried their wares. Everything was offered to the passer-by, from an ingot of gold to roasted cow-flesh on spits. Now came a blinding flash from sun-lit metal, and a sword was thrust in Cormac’s face. Gold and silver-smiths were proclaiming their work. “An Excalibur! An Excalibur!” they chanted. “Without trouble of crossing the lake and suing unto Morgan le Fay! Young men and warriors! An Excalibur!” Other marvels of their work they showed; delicate thread of pure gold as fine as hair, and sword handles of such miraculous workmanship that a square inch of mosaic held on its surface more than two thousand points of gold.