“I have accorded you incessant praise
  And song and service, dear, because of this;
  And always I have dreamed incessantly
  Who always dreamed, when in oncoming days
  This man or that shall love you, and at last
  This man or that shall win you, it must be
  That, loving him, you will have pity on me
  When happiness engenders memory
  And long thoughts, nor unkindly, of the past,
  O Branwen!

  “Of this I know not surely, who am sure
  That I shall always love you while I live,
  And that, when I am dead, with naught to give
  Of song or service, Love will yet endure,
  And yet retain his last prerogative,
  When I lie still, and sleep out centuries,
  With dreams of you and the exceeding love
  I bore you, and am glad dreaming thereof,
  And give God thanks for all, and so find peace,
  O Branwen!”

“Now, were I to get as tipsy as that,” Richard enviously thought, midway in a return to his stolid sheep, “I would simply go to sleep and wake up with a headache.  And were I to fall as many fathoms deep in love as this Gwyllem ventures, or, rather, as he hurls himself with a splurge, I would perform—­I wonder, now, what miracle?”

For he was, though vaguely, discontent.  This Gwyllem was so young, so earnest over every trifle, and above all, was so untroubled by forethought:  each least desire controlled him, as varying winds sport with a fallen leaf, whose frank submission to superior vagaries the boy appeared to emulate.  Richard saw that in a fashion Gwyllem was superb.  “And heigho!” said Richard, “I am attestedly a greater fool than he, but I begin to weary of a folly so thin-blooded.”

The next morning came a ragged man, riding upon a mule.  He declared himself a tinker.  He chatted out an hour with Richard, who perfectly recognized him as Sir Walter Blount; and then this tinker crossed over into England.

Richard whistled.  “Now my cousin will be quite sure, and now my anxious cousin will come to speak with Richard of Bordeaux.  And now, by every saint in the calendar!  I am as good as King of England.”

He sat down beneath a young oak and twisted four or five blades of grass between his fingers while he meditated.  Undoubtedly he would kill this squinting Henry of Lancaster with a clear conscience and even with a certain relish, much as one crushes the uglier sort of vermin, but, hand upon heart, Richard was unable to avow any particularly ardent desire for the scoundrel’s death.  Thus crudely to demolish the knave’s adroit and year-long schemings savored actually of grossness.  The spider was venomous, and his destruction laudable; granted, but in crushing him you ruined his web, a miracle of patient machination, which, despite yourself, compelled hearty admiring and envy.  True, the process would recrown a certain Richard, but then, as Richard recalled it, being King was rather tedious.  Richard was not now quite sure that he wanted to be King, and, in consequence, be daily plagued by a host of vexatious and ever-squabbling barons.  “I shall miss the little huzzy, too,” he thought.