t.
Others shall tell what banners flew from all four of its towers, adding
a splendour to the wind, and for what cause they flew. I have yet to
tell of their building.

The second storey was roofed, and Castle Rodriguez still rose one layer
day by day, with a hauling at pulleys and the work of a hundred men:
and all the while the park swept farther into the forest.

And the trees that grew up through the building were worked by the
craftsmen in every chamber into which they grew: and a great branch of
the hugest of them made a little crooked stair in an upper storey. On
the floors they laid down skins of beasts that the bowmen slew in the
forest; and on the walls there hung all manner of leather, tooled and
dyed as they had the art to do in that far-away period in Spain.

When the third storey was finished they roofed the castle over, laying
upon the huge rafters red tiles that they made of clay. But the towers
were not yet finished.

At this time the King of Shadow Valley sent a runner into Lowlight to
shoot a blunt arrow with a message tied to it into Don Alderon's
garden, near to the door, at evening.

And they went on building the towers above the height of the roof And
near the top of them they made homes for archers, little turrets that
leaned like swallows' nests out from each tower, high places where they
could see and shoot and not be seen from below. And little narrow
passages wound away behind perched battlements of stone, by which
archers could slip from place to place, and shoot from here or from
there and never be known. So were built in that distant age the towers
of Castle Rodriguez.

And one day four weeks from the felling of the first oak, the period of
his promise being accomplished, the King of Shadow Valley blew his
horn. And standing by what had been the bowmen's cottage, now all shut
in by sheer walls of Castle Rodriguez, he gathered his bowmen to him.
And when they were all about him he gave them their orders. They were
to go by stealth to the village of Lowlight, and were to be by daylight
before the house of Don Alderon; and, whether wed or unwed, whether she
fled or folk defended the house, to bring Dona Serafina of the Valley
of Dawnlight to be the chatelaine of Castle Rodriguez.

For this purpose he bade them take with them a chariot that he thought
magnificent, though the mighty timbers that gave grandeur to Castle
Rodriguez had a cumbrous look in the heavy vehicle that was to the