of breathing. Then
gathering up his strength for the last time and looking at his son,
"The sword to the wars," he said. "The mandolin to the balconies." With
that he fell back dead.

Now there were no wars at that time so far as was known in Spain, but
that old lord's eldest son, regarding those last words of his father as
a commandment, determined then and there in that dim, vast chamber to
gird his legacy to him and seek for the wars, wherever the wars might
be, so soon as the obsequies of the sepulture were ended. And of those
obsequies I tell not here, for they are fully told in the Black Books
of Spain, and the deeds of that old lord's youth are told in the Golden
Stories. The Book of Maidens mentions him, and again we read of him in
Gardens of Spain. I take my leave of him, happy, I trust, in Paradise,
for he had himself the accomplishments that he held needful in a
Christian, skill with the sword and a way with the mandolin; and if
there be some harder, better way to salvation than to follow that which
we believe to be good, then are we all damned. So he was buried, and
his eldest son fared forth with his legacy dangling from his girdle in
its long, straight, lovely scabbard, blue velvet, with emeralds on it,
fared forth on foot along a road of Spain. And though the road turned
left and right and sometimes nearly ceased, as though to let the small
wild flowers grow, out of sheer good will such as some roads never
have; though it ran west and east and sometimes south, yet in the main
it ran northward, though wandered is a better word than ran, and the
Lord of the Valleys of Arguento Harez who owned no valleys, or anything
but a sword, kept company with it looking for the wars. Upon his back
he had slung his mandolin. Now the time of the year was Spring, not
Spring as we know it in England, for it was but early March, but it was
the time when Spring coming up out of Africa, or unknown lands to the
south, first touches Spain, and multitudes of anemones come forth at
her feet.

Thence she comes north to our islands, no less wonderful in our woods
than in Andalusian valleys, fresh as a new song, fabulous as a rune,
but a little pale through travel, so that our flowers do not quite
flare forth with all the myriad blaze of the flowers of Spain.

And all the way as he went the young man looked at the flame of those
southern flowers, flashing on either side of him all the way, as though
the rainbow had been broken in