"Yonder in Adlaz is a larger palace and a wider throne," said Glorian.
"Aye, lady," he answered. "To-morrow I shall go to seek it."
A great feast followed the coronation. When it was done, all night long through the streets of Zele-omaz and across the bridges of Illia, sounded the rumbling of chariot-wheels and the tramp of marching feet. Ruthar was on the march at last, and the destination was the Kimbrian Wall.
So it fell out that the ambition of Minos of Sardanes had not been so vain of attainment. He had won a kingdom for "the king that was to come."
As near as they dared, Everson's army of workmen had pushed the completion of their broad highway to the Kimbrian Wall, clearing and building up the old, disused road. Trees had been felled and removed where it was necessary, and rocks had been dragged away with much labor—and all with as little noise as possible, so that the men of Atlo who garrisoned the wall might know nothing of the work, and that when the time should come, Maeronica could be taken unawares.
To do that the road-makers had been forced to halt their work two hundred yards from the wall, where a belt of thick forest was left standing across the way which effectually screened their operations.
When the roadway had been completed to that point, molelike, the engineers and sappers dug into the earth and pushed on. The old roadway, suiting their purposes well, led to the wall at a point nearly midway between two of the watchtowers, which were distant from one another about a mile. Another circumstance which was favorable to the lieutenant's plan was that the neck or isthmus which connected Ruthar to Maeronica was, though high above the sea, comparatively level.
Back of a knoll in the forest the miners sank their shaft. Twelve feet down in the earth they struck the living rock and proceeded along that, excavating a tunnel, or gallery, eight feet high by ten feet across. This work was done swiftly, for the tunnel was wide enough so that four men might work in it abreast, and as fast as one quartet was wearied another took its place, and the picks were swinging day and night. As the diggers went on, a multitude of workers behind them carried back the loosened earth and shored the gallery up with timbers so that it might not cave.
When Everson returned from the ride to the place of Zoar, he found that his tunnel was ended—against the face of the Kimbrian Wall, which was founded on the rock itself. Following his instructions, the sappers had branched the tunnel right and left along the wall, until the working was in the shape of an elongated letter "T", the cross-arm of which lay along the foundation stones of the wall and was sixty feet long.