The popular cry of the Black Horse appealed to all men. On all sides chieftains had flocked forward to fight under the boy-leader--among them Brochmael, Prince of Powys, who had united with him in defeating the Saxons. And, just as on Southern slopes, the Saxons cut their white horse on the chalk soil--so Cormac’s hosts burnt their hostile symbol black on moss and heather. The Severn valley was scorched in many places with the forms of sprawling monsters that bore no more resemblance to a horse than to any other quadruped. A huge banner, bearing the same device, flapped over Cormac’s tent on the left bank of the river. The wreck of a princely Roman mansion had been hastily fitted for the reception of Ethne and her maidens. Ruined though it was, it was a fitting palace for the splendour-loving Ethne. Gilt bronze mingled with the oak shingles and stone of the roofs; and in the nobler portions of the house, were tiles of gilt bronze; the baths were of a size for royal use, and the walls were richly gilt, or lined with sheets of brilliant glass. Glass in place of mica or shell filled the windows, and brilliant glass was inlaid, jewel-like, in the walls and in the mosaic of the floors; the rich metal-work was by Byzantine workmen. Ethne herself was clad, royally, in purple and ermine; bare arm and brow and neck clasped by Celtic torques. For ornaments she seldom wore the amber, rock-crystal and coloured glass with which most women were content, and now the long brooch that clasped her brat flashed with encrusted emeralds, set in by cunning Roman workmanship. “Here let us winter,” she said, one brilliant autumn day as she sat in state on a carved golden chair. Above her, like a baldichino, hung an embroidered peplos of great worth and beauty--so old it had once decked the shrine of a temple to Apollo. The marred walls about her had been hastily patched by fresh-hewn oak and beech from the surrounding forests; the gleaming trunks and red autumn leaves showed, side by side, with walls covered by sard and jasper and amethyst. As protection from the wind skins of sheep and goats were hung around, mingled with tapestries that might, in their beauty, have been woven at the loom of Penelope; they were embroideries from Egypt--that country so lavish in her embroideries, that they worked on the sails of the galleys she sent to Tyre! “Winter here? Not a doubt of it,” said Elgiva, bluntly. “And the crows will winter likewise. They will feast the winter long upon our flesh, and our blood will warm the winter rain.”