There they camped as well as men can when darkness has fallen before they reach their camping-ground; and Morano lit a great fire before the gate, and the smooth blank shields touching shoulders there up above them shone on Rodriguez and Alderon in the firelight.  For a while they wondered at that strange gate that stood there dividing the wilderness; and then sleep came.

As soon as they woke they called loudly, but no one guarded that gate, no step but theirs stirred in the forest.  Then, leaving Morano in the camp with its great gate that led nowhere, the two young men climbed up by branches and chains, and were soon on the other side of the gate and pressing on through the silence of the forest to find the cottage in which Rodriguez had slept.  And almost at once the green bowmen appeared, ten of them with their bows, in front of Rodriguez and Alderon.  “Stop,” said the ten green bowmen.  When the bowmen said that, there was nothing else to do.

“What do you seek?” said the bowmen.

“The King of Shadow Valley,” answered Rodriguez.

“He is not here,” they said.

“Where is he?” asked Rodriguez.

“He is nowhere,” said one, “when he does not wish to be seen.”

“Then show me the castle that he promised me,” said Rodriguez.

“We know nothing of any castle,” said one of the bowmen, and they all shook their heads.

“No castle?” said Rodriguez.

“No,” they said.

“Has the King of Shadow Valley no castle?” he asked, beginning now to despair.

“We know of none,” they said.  “He lives in the forest.”

Before Rodriguez quite despaired he asked each one if they knew not of any castle of which their King was possessed; and each of them said that there was no castle in all Shadow Valley.  The ten still stood in front of them with their bows:  and Rodriguez turned away then indeed in despair, and walked slowly back to the camp, and Alderon walked behind him.  In silence they reached their camp by the great gate that led nowhere, and there Rodriguez sat down on a log beside the dwindling fire, gazing at the grey ashes and thinking of his dead hopes.  He had not the heart to speak to Alderon, and the silence was unbroken by Morano who, for all his loquacity, knew when his words were not welcome.  Don Alderon tried to break that melancholy silence, saying that these ten bowmen did not know the whole world; but he could not cheer Rodriguez.  For, sitting there in dejection on his log, thinking of all the assurance with which he had often spoken of his castle, there was one more thing to trouble him than Don Alderon knew.  And this was that when the bowmen had appeared he had hung once more round his neck that golden badge that was worked for him by the King of Shadow Valley; and they must have seen it, and they had paid no heed to it whatever:  its magic was wholly departed.  And one thing troubled him that Rodriguez did not know, a very potent factor in human sorrow:  he had left in the morning so eagerly that he had had no breakfast, and this he entirely forgot and knew not how much of his dejection came from this cause, thinking that the loss of his castle was of itself enough.