Richard crossed himself.  “You horribly mistake my meaning.  Your practices are your own affair, and in them I decline to dabble.  I merely design to trap a tiger with his appropriate bait.  For you have a fief at Caer Idion, I think?—­Very well!  I intend to herd your sheep there, for a week or two, after the honorable example of Apollo.  It is your part to see that Henry knows I am living disguised and defenceless at Caer Idion.”

The gaunt Welshman chuckled.  “Yes, squinting Henry of Lancaster would cross the world, much less the Severn, to make quite sure of Richard’s death.  He would come in his own person with at most some twenty trustworthy followers.  I will have a hundred there; and certain aging scores will then be settled in that place.”  Glyndwyr meditated afterward, very evilly.  “Sire,” he said without prelude, “I do not recognize Richard of Bordeaux.  You have garnered much in travelling!”

“Why, look you,” Richard returned, “I have garnered so much that I do not greatly care whether this scheme succeed or no.  With age I begin to contend even more indomitably that a wise man will consider nothing very seriously.  You barons here believe it an affair of importance who may chance to be the King of England, say, this time next year; you take sides between Henry and me.  I tell you frankly that neither of us, that no man in the world, by reason of innate limitations, can ever rule otherwise than abominably, or, ruling, can create anything save discord.  Nor can I see how this matters either, since the discomfort of an ant-village is not, after all, a planet-wrecking disaster.  No, Owain, if the planets do indeed sing together, it is, depend upon it, to the burden of Fools All.  For I am as liberally endowed as most people; and when I consider my abilities, my performances, my instincts, and so on, quite aloofly, as I would appraise those of another person, I can only shrug:  and to conceive that common-sense, much less Omnipotence, would ever concern itself about the actions of a creature so entirely futile is, to me at least, impossible.”

“I have known the thought,” said Owain,—­“though rarely since I found the Englishwoman that was afterward my wife, and never since my son, my Gruffyd, was murdered by a jesting man.  He was more like me than the others, people said....  You are as yet the empty scabbard, powerless alike for help or hurt.  Ey, hate or love must be the sword, sire, that informs us here, and then, if only for a little while, we are as gods.”

“Pardie!  I have loved as often as Salomon, and in fourteen kingdoms.”

“We of Cymry have a saying, sire, that when a man loves par amours the second time he may safely assume that he has never been in love at all.”

“—­And I hate Henry of Lancaster as I do the devil.”

“I greatly fear,” said Owain with a sigh, “lest it may be your irreparable malady to hate nothing, not even that which you dislike.  No, you consider things with both eyes open, with an unmanly rationality:  whereas Sire Henry views all matters with that heroic squint which came into your family from Poictesme.”