He opened the third door, and a
rush like the tide of a living sea invaded his ears. Multitudinous
wings flapped and flashed in the sun, and, like the ascending
column from a volcano, white birds innumerable shot into the air,
darkening the day with the shadow of their cloud, and then, with a
sharp sweep, as if bent sideways by a sudden wind, flew northward,
swiftly away, and vanished. The place felt like a tomb. There
seemed no breath of life left in it.
Despair laid hold upon him; he rushed down thundering with heavy
feet. Out upon him darted the housekeeper like an ogress-spider,
and after her came her men; but Peter rushed past them, heedless
and careless - for had not the princess mocked him? - and sped
along the road to Gwyntystorm. What help lay in a miner's mattock,
a man's arm, a father's heart, he would bear to his boy.
Joan sat up all night waiting his return, hoping and hoping. The
mountain was very still, and the sky was clear; but all night long
the miner sped northward, and the heart of his wife was troubled.
CHAPTER 31
The Sacrifice
Things in the palace were in a strange condition: the king playing
with a child and dreaming wise dreams, waited upon by a little
princess with the heart of a queen, and a youth from the mines, who
went nowhere, not even into the king's chamber, without his mattock
on his shoulder and a horrible animal at his heels; in a room
nearby the colonel of his guard, also in bed, without a soldier to
obey him; in six other rooms, far apart, six miscreants, each
watched by a beast-jailer; ministers to them all, an old woman and
a page; and in the wine cellar, forty-three animals, creatures more
grotesque than ever brain of man invented.
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