Abbot Arnaut sat silent a moment, then shook the reins and his mule climbed on toward the hill-top. “Ah,” he said to himself, and he said it piously. “He is young, and when you are young perils do not imperil! When you are young, you are an eel to slip through—I have done what I could! Doubtless he will escape.” That night there rose a great round moon. It lighted Garin through the wood until he was ready to sleep,—it showed him where he could find the thickest bed and covering of leaves,—and when he waked in the night he saw it like a shield overhead. All day, riding behind Brother Anselm, the monks about him, black as crows, he had felt dull and dead. Waking now in the night, forest around him and moon above, sheer unfamiliarity and wonder at his plight made him shiver and start like a lost child. All that he had lost passed before him. Foulque passed, transfigured in his eyes, he was so lonely and sick for home. Raimbaut the Six-fingered passed, transfigured. The rude hall in Raimbaut’s keep, the smoky fire and the lounging men—they were desirable to him; he felt a cold pang when it crossed him that he would never win back. He strove to plunge, head to heel, into the rich depths of the feeling before this feeling, to recall the glow out of which he had spoken at Castel-Noir, to go back to the nightingale’s singing. It was there, that feeling; he knew that it had been born and was living. But to-night half a chill and empty world was between him and it. There in the forest, beneath the round moon, he had a bewildered brain and an aching heart. Then at last he crossed the half-world to some faint sweetness, and so slept. With the dawn he was afoot. He had a piece of bread in his pouch, and as he walked he ate this, and a streamlet gave him drink. The wood thinned. In the first brightness of the day he came upon a road of so fair a width and goodness that he saw it must be a highway and beaded with towns. Apparently it ran northeast and southwest, though so broken was the country that at short range it rounded almost any corner you might choose. Where he was going he did not know, but he took the trend that led him south by west. Dimly he thought of making his way into Spain. Barcelona—there was a great town—and King Alfonso of Aragon was known for a gallant king, rich, liberal and courtly. Garin looked down at his serf’s tunic and torn shoon—but then he felt within his breast. Foulque’s purse was there. When he waked, it had been first to bewilderment and then to mere relief in warmth and sunlight. Now as he walked courage returned, the new energy and glow. Early as it was, the road had its travel which increased with the strengthening day. It was a country rich in beauty. He had never been so far from home. The people upon the road were like people he had seen before. Yet there existed small, regional differences, and his eye was quick at noting these. They pleased him; imagination played. The morning was fair without and within.