, to make quite sure of Richard's death. He would
come in his own person with at most some twenty followers. I will have
a hundred there; and certain aging scores will then be settled in that
place." Glyndwyr meditated afterward, very evilly. "Sire," he said
without prelude, "I do not recognize Richard of Bordeaux. You have
garnered much in travelling!"

"Why, look you," Richard returned, "I have garnered so much that I do
not greatly care whether this scheme succeed or no. With age I begin
to contend even more indomitably that a wise man will consider nothing
very seriously. You barons here believe it an affair of importance who
may chance to be the King of England, say, this time next year; you
take sides between Henry and myself. I tell you frankly that neither
of us, that no man in the world, by reason of innate limitations, can
ever rule otherwise than abominably, or, ruling, create anything save
discord. Nor can I see how this matters either, since the discomfort
of an ant-village is not, after all, a planet-wrecking disaster. Nay,
if the planets do indeed sing together, it is, depend upon it, to the
burden of _Fools All_. For I am as liberally endowed as most people;
and when I consider my abilities, performances, instincts, and so on,
quite aloofly, as I would those of another person, I can only shrug:
and to conceive that common-sense, much less Omnipotence, would ever
concern itself about the actions of a creature so entirely futile is,
to me at least, impossible."

"I have known the thought," said Owain--"though rarely since I found
the Englishwoman that was afterward my wife, and never since my son, my
Grunyd, was murdered by a jesting man. He was more like me than the
others, people said.... You are as yet the empty scabbard, powerless
alike for help or hurt. Ey, hate or love must be the sword, sire, that
informs us here, and then, if only for a little while, we are as gods."

"Pardie! I have loved as often as Salomon, and in fourteen kingdoms."

"We of Cymry have a saying, sire, that when a man loves par amours the
second time he may safely assume that he has never been in love at all."

"And I hate Henry of Lancaster as I do the devil."

"I greatly fear," said Owain with a sigh, "lest it may be your
irreparable malady to hate nothing, not even that which you dislike."

So then Glyndwyr rode south to besiege and burn the town of Caerdyf,
while at Caer Idion Richard Holland tranquilly a