This terrible creature, I must tell you, was a kind of fearsome winged horse. It was larger than any earthly animal, black as midnight in color, and armored over the chest and head with a sheath of dragon’s scales. Add to this a pair of giant wings, black and lustrous as a raven’s, a wicked horse-like head with huge jaws, hoofs of blue steel, and an appetite like a devouring flame, and you will see that the people of the Golden Plain had true cause for alarm. Black wings outspread, blue hoofs plunging, roaring from the fiery pits of its violet nostrils, the hippodrac was master in the land. In the hope of ridding themselves of the monster, the people of the Golden Plain offered a huge treasure to whosoever might conquer the invader. In true soldier fashion the grenadier resolved to fight the hippodrac, and win fame and fortune at a blow. Now the Lord Chancellor of the realm, who ruled the land during the minority of the Princess Mirabel, had no intention whatever of paying the promised reward. Not only had this wicked man stolen so much money from the royal treasury that scarce was a penny left, but also was he miserly, cruel, and avaricious. Torn between fear of the hippodrac and fear of having to empty his own money-bags of the stolen gold in order to pay the reward, the Chancellor wandered back and forth all day through the castle halls. Thus far, however, no one had ever returned to claim the treasure. After talking with some who had seen the hippodrac, the soldier retired to a little inn to make his plans. Sitting alone in a great settle by the fire, he watched the flames grow ruddier as the afternoon sun sank below the western hills. Presently it was night, a night quiet, cool, and bright with great winter stars. The grenadier made his way unobserved out of the royal city, and soon arrived in the midst of the ruined and trampled fields. Here the grain had been gathered, bound in sheaves, and left to perish when the harvesters fled; here the uncut stalks had withered in the ground; here stood a house from which everyone had run for his life. Presently the soldier beheld, standing apart on a lonely hill, the crumbling towers of the ruined castle which served as the hippodrac’s den. A late, wasted, half-moon began to rise. The soldier made his way up the slope, and peered through the doorless portal into the moonlit ruin. At the end of the great entrance-hall of the castle, its monstrous head resting on the lowest step of the winding stair which led to the roofless banqueting-hall above, lay the monster. The rays of the waning moon, slanting through the broken tracery of a great window, fell on its vast bulk; a rumbling breathing alone disturbed the starry silence of the night.