Days passed, and months, and the Lord Juss lay yet as it were in the article of death tended by his friend and by the Queen in that pavilion by the lake. At length when winter was gone in middle earth, and the spring far spent, back came that last little martlet on weary wing, she they had long given up for lost. She sank in her mistress’s bosom, almost dead indeed for weariness. But the Queen cherished her, and gave her nectar, so that she gathered strength and said, “O Queen Sophonisba, fosterling of the Gods, I flew for thee east and south and west and north, by sea and by land, in heat and frost, unto the frozen poles, about and about. And at the last came to Demonland, to the range of Neverdale. There is a tarn among the mountains, that men call Dule Tarn. Very deep it is, and men that live by bread do hold it for bottomless. Yet hath it a bottom, and on the bottom lieth an hippogriff’s egg, seen by me, for I flew at a great height above it.” “In Demonland!” said the Queen. And she said to Lord Brandoch Daha, “It is the only one. Ye must go home to fetch it.” Brandoch Daha said, “Home to Demonland? After we spent our powers and crossed the world to find the way?” But when Lord Juss knew of it, straightway with hope so renewed began his sickness to depart from him, so that he was in a few weeks’ space very well recovered. And it was now a full year gone by since first the Demons came up into Koshtra Belorn. XV: QUEEN PREZMYRA HOW THE LADY PREZMYRA DISCOVERED TO LORD GRO WHAT SHE WOULD HAVE BROUGHT ABOUT FOR DEMONLAND, IN WHICH SHOULD ALSO APPEAR HER LORD’S YET MORE GREATNESS AND ADVANCEMENT: AND HOW HER TOO LOUD SPEAKING OF HER PURPOSE WAS THE OCCASION WHEREBY THE LORD CORINIUS WAS TO LEARN THE SWEETNESS OF BLISS DEFERRED. On that same twenty-sixth night of May, when Lord Juss and Lord Brandoch Daha beheld from earth’s loftiest pinnacle the land of Zimiamvia and Koshtra Belorn, Gro walked with the Lady Prezmyra on the western terrace in Carcë. It wanted yet two hours of midnight. The air was warm, the sky a bower of moonbeam and starbeam. Now and then a faint breeze stirred as if night turned in her sleep. The walls of the palace and the Iron Tower cut off the terrace from the direct moonlight, and flamboys spreading their wobbling light made alternating regions of brightness and gloom. Galloping strains of music and the noise of revelry came from within the palace. Gro spake: “If thy question, O Queen, overlie a wish to have me gone, I am as lightning to obey thee howsoe’er it grieve me.” “’Twas an idle wonder only,” she said. “Stay and it like thee.”