There was just a little quiver in her lip as she said this, and the fierce old king’s face softened somewhat.

“Nay,” he said, “I meant no unkindness.  I forgot that it is not right to speak to a child as to grown warriors.  It is long since there was a lady about the place who is one of us.”

Then Nona smiled wanly, and set her hand on that of the old king, and kept it there while she spoke.

“Indeed, Thane, it may be foolishness, and now perhaps as time goes on it begins to seem so to me.  Once, as I know now, on the night when Owen first slept in his new house on the moor, I dreamed that he was in sore danger, for I seemed to see shadows of men creeping everywhere round the house that I have never set eyes on; and again, on the next night, and that was the night of the burning, I saw the house in flames, and men fought and fell around it among the flickering shadows, but I did not seem to see Owen.  And then on the next night, soon after I first slept, I woke trembling with the most strange dream of all.  I think that the light had hardly gone from the west, but the moon had not yet risen.  I dreamed that I stood at the end of a narrow valley, whose sides were of tall cliffs of rough grey stone, and in the depth of the valley I saw a great menhir standing on the farther side of a black pool.  And all the surface of the pool was rippling as if somewhat had disturbed it, and set upright in the ground on this side was a sword, like to that which King Ina gave you, Thane—­ay, that which you wear now, not like my father’s swords.  And I thought that I heard one call on your name.”

Now I heard Jago stifle a cry behind me, and as for myself I stood silent, biting my lip that I might know that I was not dreaming also, and I saw that Howel was looking at me in a wondering way, while Gerent glowered at me.  All the time that she had been speaking, Nona had looked on the ground, in some fear lest we should smile at this which had been called foolishness, and I was glad when the king broke the silence with a short laugh.

“Well, Oswald, what think you of this?  On my word, it seems that you half believe in the foolishness that some hold concerning dreams.”

“I would not hold this so,” said Howel,—­“seeing that she has dreamed of things that did take place, as we know too well.”

“Fire and fighting?  Things, forsooth, that every village girl on the Saxon marches is frayed with every time she sleeps.”

So said Gerent, and I answered him: 

“Foolishness I cannot call this, either, Lord King.  I also have seen the same in the night watches.  I have seen pool and menhir, and the cliffs that hem them, even as the princess saw them.  And I woke with the voice of Owen in my ears.”

“Dreams, dreams!” the old king said.  “Go to, you do but tell me these trifles to please me, and as if to give me hope that in such an unheard-of place we shall find him whom we have lost.  Say no more, but go your ways on the morrow and search.  And may you find your dream valley and what is therein.”