He bowed his head.  “So be it.  Each man to his own path, but I would ours had run together.  Your way is the way of the white man.  You conquer slowly, but the line of your conquest goes not back.  Slowly it eats its way through the forest, and fields and manors appear in the waste places, and cattle graze in the coverts of the deer.  Listen, brother.  Shalah has had his visions when his eyes were unsealed in the night watches.  He has seen the white man pressing up from the sea, and spreading over the lands of his fathers.  He has seen the glens of the hills parcelled out like the meadows of Henricus, and a great multitude surging ever on to the West.  His race is doomed by God to perish before the stranger; but not yet awhile, for the white man comes slowly.  It hath been told that the Children of the West Wind must seek their cradle, and while there is time he would join them in that quest.  The white men follow upon their heels, but in his day and in that of his son’s sons they will lead their life according to the ancient ways.  He hath seen the wisdom of the stranger, and found among them men after his own heart; but the Spirit of his fathers calls, and now he returns to his own people.”

“What will you do there?” I asked.

“I know not.  I am still a prince among them, and will sway their councils.  It may be fated that I slay yonder magician and reign in his stead.”

He got to his feet and looked proudly westward.

“In a little I shall overtake them.  But I would my brother had been of my company.”

Slowly we travelled north along the crests, for though my mind was now saner, I had no strength in my body.  The hill mists came down on us, and the rain drove up from the glens.  I was happy now for all my weakness, for I was lapped in a great peace.  The raw weather, which had once been a horror of darkness to me, was now something kindly and homelike.  The wet smells minded me of my own land, and the cool buffets of the squalls were a tonic to my spirit.  I wandered into pleasant dreams, and scarce felt the roughness of the ground on my bare feet and the aches in every limb.

Long ere we got to the Gap I was clean worn out.  I remember that I fell constantly, and could scarcely rise.  Then I stumbled, and the last power went out of will and sinew.  I had a glimpse of Shalah’s grave face as I slipped into unconsciousness.

I woke in a glow of firelight.  Faces surrounded me, dim wraith-like figures still entangled in the meshes of my dreams.  Slowly the scene cleared, and I recognized Grey’s features, drawn and constrained, and yet welcoming.  Bertrand was weeping after his excitable fashion.

But there was a face nearer to me, and with that face in my memory I went off into pleasant dreams.  Somewhere in them mingled the words of the old spaewife, that I should miss love and fortune in the sunshine and find them in the rain.