He rose up impatiently, and Howel gave him his arm from the room.  Jago followed him, and when the heavy curtain fell across the doorway, Nona, who had risen with Gerent, turned to me.

“I am sure now that there we shall find Owen,” she said, with a new light of hope in her eyes.  “And also I am sure that at the bottom of all the matter is Morfed the priest.”

“It was a needed warning against him that I had from your hand, Princess,” I said; “now let me thank you for it.”

“I am glad you had it safely, for indeed I feared for you with those people on the ship with you.  What has become of them?”

I told her the fate of Dunwal, so far as I knew it.  I did not then know that Gerent had put an end to his plotting once for all two days after Owen was lost.  As for his daughter, I knew no more than Jago told the ealdorman.

Then she said:  “Now I would ask you to speak to my father, that he would let me go with you to Dartmoor, that I may help you search.  I do not like to be far from him, but he says there may be danger.  Which makes me the more anxious not to leave him, as you may suppose.”

She smiled, but as I made no answer she went on: 

“And maybe Owen will need nursing when you find him.  They say he was sorely wounded.  Ay, I am sure we shall find him, else why did we have these strange visions?  And I think that were he not disabled altogether he would have won to freedom in some way.”

“It is that wounding that makes me fear the worst,” I said in a low voice; for indeed the thought of Owen as hurt, in the care, or want of care, of those who hated him, was not easy to be borne.  “It is my fear that we shall be too late.”

“Nay, but you must not fear that,” she said quickly.  “That is no sort of mind in which you have to set to work.  I will think rather that they have carried him to some safe tending.  There will be time enough to dread the worst when it is certain.  There was nought in the dreams to make us think that he was dead.”

The bright face and voice cheered me wonderfully, and for the moment, at least, I felt sure that our search would not fail.  Then I tried to persuade her not to come with us.  One could not say that there was any safety, even for her, among the men who would harm Owen, though I thought that none would be in the least likely to fall on Howel.  Rather, they would keep out of his way altogether.  In my own mind I wished that I was going alone, or with none but Jago, though, on the other hand, it might be possible that men would speak to him if they would not to me.  And at last I did persuade her to bide here until we had news, promising that if need was she should come and see the place herself when all was known.

“Well, maybe it is not so needful that I should go now,” she said.  “I thought that I alone could tell my father when that valley was found, but you know as much of it as I, and will be sure when you stand in it.”