ask the thane to turn out once more."

"This is a quest which lies close to my heart, lord," I said,
rising. "I will go gladly if you will let me guide your folk."

"Yet you are weary, and need rest."

"I have slept for long hours in the open today," I said. "I am fed
and rested. Let us go."

For indeed, now that Hilda was in safety, the longing to end the
quest came on me, and I should have slept little that night for
thinking of it. Moreover, I should have no fear of Gymbert and his
men spying me, and thereby making fresh trouble.

So in the end the archbishop said that we might go, and with that
four of his priests and the reeve with half a dozen men made ready,
and in a very short time we rode out of the gates again in the
moonlight, on our way back toward Sutton. The river was between us
and the Welsh we had met, and they were not to be feared. The monks
were riding their sumpter mules, and the reeve and we were mounted
on horses from his own stable or lent by his friends, and his men
trotted after us, some bearing picks and spades.

Under the little hill whereon the palace stands we rode presently,
and I suppose that we were taken for a train of belated chapmen, or
that the guards saw we were headed by monks, and would not trouble
us. Maybe, however, the disorder of the palace had put an end for
the time to much care in watching, but at any rate we passed
without challenge.

And so we came to the riverside track which should lead us to the
end of our journey, and, as I hoped with all my heart, to the end
of our quest. Already I could see the trees under which the cart
stood.

Out of the southwest came one of those showers which had been about
all day, and which had not yet quite cleared off from the hills
round us. It drew across the face of the moon, which had been
sending our long shadows before us as if they were in as great
haste as we, and for a few minutes we stayed in the dark to let it
pass. And as it passed there came what men sometimes hold as a
marvel.

The rain left us, passing ahead of us like a dark wall, and the
moon shone out suddenly from the cloud's edge, and then across the
land leaped a great white rainbow, perfect and bright, so that one
could dimly see the seven colours which should be in its span. And
one end rested on the river bank close under the place where the
cart stood among the trees, and the other was away beyond the
forest, eastward somewhere.

"Lo," said the monk wh