"Shall we search for him with torches?" Bohemond proposed, briskly, while the men-at-arms looked sheepish over their blunder and wished Simon at the devil. The duchess shook her head impatiently. "No, it is no matter," she said. She believed that she would recognize the man again if she saw him in Athens. She was confident, too, that the man could have little power, even if he had the inclination, to interfere with her plans. The immediate need was to carry Rainouart quickly to Athens and there to work her will upon his troubled wits. She mounted lightly into the saddle of her horse, her spirits were nimble, her heart gay, her brain elated. She had taken at last a prize that she had long desired, a prize that she would not lightly yield again. All was very well with her. "Onward!" she commanded, "onward! Athens, ho!" So she and her company resumed their measured journey to Athens, a line of torches on the white highway, while the prince slept a dreamless sleep on the litter still warm with the pressure of the limbs of Esclaramonde. X SIMON BLOWS OUT HIS LANTERN When Simon had made some little way into the wood he quitted the animal all-fours, irksome to one already stiff and weary, for the natural carriage of man, and made to think things over and to look about him. The latter was difficult to do, at least to any great advantage. More frequent clouds now scumbled the sky and huddled in dull clumps between moon and earth, wherefore in the dense wood the darkness was so thick that Simon felt as if he could pluck pieces out of it as out of a palpable pall or curtain. But Simon was not discomfited, Simon was not at a loss. "Here," he murmured, sagaciously, "comes in the wisdom of your philosophic lantern." Squatting cautiously in the darkness, after assuring himself by preliminary pattings of the absence of any hostile snags, he fumbled in his pouch till he found flint, steel, and tinder-box. Then after the habitual preliminary pains and failures that darkened the lives of those that sought illumination, he succeeded in getting a light and applying it gingerly to the candle in its iron house. When the wick began to burn freely he hasped the door and felt less lonely and astray. Through the thin plates of horn a pale yellow light flowed dimly, showing like some civic lamp of fish-oil seen through a fog. But it was at least bright enough to enable Simon to distinguish where he was for a few paces in any direction, and to protect himself when he started walking again from crashing with unnecessary vehemence into unexpected tree-trunks. What was less to the purpose was that the flickering wick seemed to stir from slumber all manner of moths and midges, which hustled in their myriads about lantern and lantern-carrier with a wholly unnecessary activity. But if their attentions called for a brave display of philosophy, this was all in the part of one who carried the lantern of Diogenes.