darkening when they met there, Rodriguez having found nothing
but that iron barrier going on from trunk to trunk, and Alderon having
found a great gateway of iron; but it was shut. Through the silent
shadows stealing abroad at evening the three men crashed their way on
foot, leading their horses, towards this gate; but their way was slow
and difficult for no path at all led up to it. It was dark when they
reached it and they saw the high gate in the night, a black barrier
among the trees where no one would wish to come, and in forest that
seemed to these three to be nearly impenetrable. And what astonished
Rodriguez most of all was that the chains had not been across the path
when he had feasted with the green bowmen.

They stood there gazing, all three, at the dark locked gate, and then
they saw two shields that met in the midst of it, and Rodriguez mounted
his horse and stretched up to feel what device there was on the beaten
iron; and both the shields were blank.

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 k