ther,
lest it be recognized and bring you to the gallows or to a worse place.
So why did you not scrape your feet before coming into my clean kitchen?
and how many times do you expect me to speak to you about that?"

Manuel said nothing. But he seemed to meditate over something that
puzzled him. In the upshot he went into the miller's chicken-yard, and
caught a goose, and plucked from its wing a feather.

Then Manuel put on his Sunday clothes.

"Far too good for you to be traveling in," said Math.

Manuel looked down at his half-sister, and once or twice he blinked
those shining strange eyes of his. "Sister, if I had been properly
dressed when I was master of the doubtful palace, the Lady Gisele would
have taken me quite seriously. I have been thinking about her
observations as to my elbows."

"The coat does not make the man," replied Math piously.

"It is your belief in any such saying that has made a miller's wife of
you, and will keep you a miller's wife until the end of time. Now I
learned better from my misadventures upon Vraidex, and from my talking
with that insane Horvendile about the things which have been and some
things which are to be."

Math, who was a wise woman, said queerly, "I perceive that you are
letting your hair grow."

Manuel said, "Yes."

"Boy, fast and loose is a mischancy game to play."

"And being born, also, is a most hazardous speculation, Sister, yet we
perforce risk all upon that cast."

"Now you talk stuff and nonsense--"

"Yes, Sister; but I begin to suspect that the right sort of stuff and
nonsense is not unremunerative. I may be wrong, but I shall afford my
notion a testing."

"And after what shiftless idiocy will you be chasing now, to neglect
your work?"

"Why, as always, Sister, I must follow my own thinking and my own
desire," says Manuel, lordlily, "and both of these are for a flight
above pigs."

Thereafter Manuel kissed Math, and, again without taking leave of
Suskind in the twilight, or of anyone else, he set forth for the far
land of Provence.

VII

The Crown of Wisdom

So did it come about that as King Helmas rode a-hunting in Nevet under
the Hunter's Moon he came upon a gigantic and florid young fellow, who
was very decently clad in black, and had a queer droop to his left eye,
and who appeared to be wandering at adventure in the autumn woods: and
the King remembered what had been foretold.

Says King Helmas to Manuel the swineherd, "What