Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/30

imagined, there rang the seeming of harp strings lightly touched and left to thrill.

The single room was thick carpeted in black, and on the walls were hung harp and spear-head, harp and spear-head, all the way around; small Welsh harps and the great bronze leaf spears of the Britons, and these against the unfinished stone. Below these were the all-seeing windows where-from you might look out on three valleys and a mighty family of mountains; and lower still, a single bench circled around the room against the wall. There was a table in the center loaded with tattered books, and beside it a copper brazier, set on a Greek tripod of black iron.

The great hound nuzzled Henry as he entered so that he drew away in fright, for is there anything under the blue cup so deadly as the merest notice of a red-eared dog?

“You are going to the Indies. Sit here, boy. See! you can watch your home valley now, so that it go not flying off to Avalon.” The harps caught up his tones and hummed an answering faint resonance.

“My father said I was to come here and tell you of my going and listen to your speech. My father thinks your speech may keep me here.”

“Going to the Indies,” Merlin repeated. “Will you be seeing Elizabeth before you go and making grand promises to flutter the heart of her and strangle the breath in her, after you're gone, from thinking of the things you will bring back to her?”

Henry blushed deeply. “Who told you I