"Why, if my ghost has any strength at all, it may try again somehow," he said. "Or if not--well, I tried once. I gave Hwicca a man for a husband to the very end." He lifted his hands to the eastern light, and in Cimberland's tongue he called upon the day and the dark, the wind and sea and all the Powers of earth to witness his promise. Phryne flung herself to her knees. "Eodan, Eodan, you are a little child among wolves! You know not what you say!" "I know what I have said," he replied slowly. "I have sworn an oath that is not able to be broken." He felt the cold and the wet gloom before dawn close in on him. What had he done, indeed? he thought. It was not well to make such enormous promises without thinking carefully. He had belike pledged himself to death. But, if so, death was his weird and would not be stayed; for he had invoked the very river of Time. He shuddered with the awe of it, his teeth clenched together. "I will leave in a few days, as soon as I can," he said. "You will forget we ever spoke of this, will you not?" Phryne rose again. She leaned against the wall, her cheek and palms to its rough brick, her eyes closed. It was as though she drew on her own roots of strength. At last, in a faraway voice, she answered him: "No, I shall help you." VI Not till four days afterward did Phryne stop Eodan on the portico and breathe: "I have made ready. Meet me in my chamber--do you know where it is?--after sunset, and I will try to disguise you. Can you get horses?" His heart raced within him. He thought for a moment, standing under fluted pillars with a green lawn and broad fields before him, standing among thunders and drawn swords. At last he nodded. "There are stableboys who sleep among the animals, but it will be simple enough to frighten them, if I have any weapon. No one else will know until morning." "Then the gates of Tartarus will be opened!" Her eyes were huge and her cheeks pale. "Let me see," she murmured. "I will have a sword for you--I know where such tools are kept--and a couple of daggers as well. You can overawe the boys, so they let themselves be bound and gagged one by one. Drop a little word here or there, as if in carelessness, to make them think you plan to flee into the mountains. That would be the expected direction, anyhow, to reach Helvetia. Where did you think to go, in truth, after Rome, Eodan?" "I do not know," he said. "North, to some place where men are still free. I do not know what the best way is."