And even so, the next night after, when folk were abed and asleep, Juss, in his high bed-chamber sitting late at his book, heard a bridle ring. So he called his boys to go with him with torches to the gate. And there in the dancing torch-light came the Lord Brandoch Daha a-riding into Galing Castle, and somewhat of the bigness of a great pumpkin tied in a silken cloth hung at his saddle-bow. Juss met him in the gate alone. “Let me down from my horse,” he said, “and receive from me thy bed-fellow that thou must sleep with by the Lake of Ravary.” “Thou hast gotten it?” said Juss. “The hippogriff’s egg, out of Dule Tarn, by thyself alone?” and he took the bundle right tenderly in his two hands. “Ay,” answered he. “’Twas where thou and I made sure of it last summer, according to the word of her little martlet that first found it for us. The tarn was frozen and ’twas tricky work diving and most villanous cold. It is small marvel thou’rt a lucky man in thine undertakings, O Juss, when thou hast such an art to draw thy friends to second thee.” “I thought thou’dst not leave me,” said Juss. “Thought?” cried Brandoch Daha. “Didst ever dream I’d suffer thee to do thy foolishnesses alone? Nay, I’ll come first to the enchanted lake with thee, and let be Carcë i’ the meantime. Howbeit I’ll do it ’gainst the stream of my resolution quite.” • • • • • Now was but six days more of preparation, and on the second day of April was all ready in Lookinghaven for the sailing of that mighty armament: fifty and nine ships of war and five ships of burthen and thrice two thousand fighting men. Lady Mevrian sat on her milk-white mare overlooking the harbour where the ships all orderly rode at anchor, shadowy gray against the sun-bright shimmer of the sea, with here and there a splash of colour, crimson or blue or grass-green, from their painted hulls or a beam of the sun glancing from their golden masts or figure-heads. Gro stood at her bridle-rein. The Galing road, winding down from Havershaw Tongue, ran close below them and so along the sea-shore to the quays at Lookinghaven. Along that road the hard earth rang with the tramp of armed men and the tramp of horses, and the light west wind wafted to Gro and Mevrian on their grassy hill snatches of deep-voiced battle-chants or the galloping notes of trumpet and pipe and the drum that sets men’s hearts a-throb.