Gro was stretched on the brink of the cliff, face downward, propped on his two elbows, studying those dark waters. “Surely,” he said, “the great mountains of the world are a present remedy if men did but know it against our modern discontent and ambitions. In the hills is wisdom’s fount. They are deep in time. They know the ways of the sun and the wind, the lightning’s fiery feet, the frost that shattereth, the rain that shroudeth, the snow that putteth about their nakedness a softer coverlet than fine lawn: which if their large philosophy question not if it be a bridal sheet or a shroud, hath not this unpolicied calm his justification ever in the returning year, and is it not an instance to laugh our carefulness out of fashion? of us, little children of the dust, children of a day, who with so many burdens do burden us with taking thought and with fears and desires and devious schemings of the mind, so that we wax old before our time and fall weary ere the brief day be spent and one reaping-hook gather us home at last for all our pains.” He looked up and she met the gaze of his great eyes; deep pools of night they seemed, where strange matters might move unseen, disturbing to look on, yet filled with a soft slumbrous charm that lulled and soothed. “Thou’st fallen a-dreaming, my lord,” said Mevrian. “And for me ’tis a hard thing to walk with thee in thy dreams, who am awake in the broad daylight and would be a-doing.” “Certes it is an ill thing,” said Lord Gro, “that thou, who hast not been nourished in mendicity or poverty but in superfluity of honour and largesse, shouldst be made fugitive in thine own dominions, to lodge with foxes and beasts of the wild mountain.” Said she, “It is yet a sweeter lodging than is to-day in Krothering. It is therefore I chafe to do somewhat. To win through to Galing, that were something.” “What profit is in Galing,” said Gro, “without Lord Juss?” She answered, “Thou wilt tell me it is even as Krothering without my brother.” Looking sidelong up at her, where she sat armed beside him, he beheld a tear a-tremble on her eyelid. He said gently, “Who shall foreknow the ways of Fate? Your highness is better here belike.” Lady Mevrian stood up. She pointed to a print in the living rock before her feet. “The hippogriff’s hoofmark!” she cried, “stricken in the rock ages ago by that high bird which presideth from of old over the predestined glory of our line, to point us on to a fame advanced above the region of the glittering stars. True is the word that that land which is in the governance of a woman only is not surely kept. I will abide idly here no more.”