Now I heard Jago stifle a cry behind me, and as for myself I stood silent, biting my lip that I might know that I was not dreaming also, and I saw that Howel was looking at me in a wondering way, while Gerent glowered at me. All the time that she had been speaking, Nona had looked on the ground, in some fear lest we should smile at this which had been called foolishness, and I was glad when the king broke the silence with a short laugh.
"Well, Oswald, what think you of this? On my word, it seems that you half believe in the foolishness that some hold concerning dreams."
"I would not hold this so," said Howel,--"seeing that she has dreamed of things that did take place, as we know too well."
"Fire and fighting? Things, forsooth, that every village girl on the Saxon marches is frayed with every time she sleeps."
So said Gerent, and I answered him:
"Foolishness I cannot call this, either, Lord King. I also have seen the same in the night watches. I have seen pool and menhir, and the cliffs that hem them, even as the princess saw them. And I woke with the voice of Owen in my ears."
"Dreams, dreams!" the old king said. "Go to, you do but tell me these trifles to please me, and as if to give me hope that in such an unheard-of place we shall find him whom we have lost. Say no more, but go your ways on the morrow and search. And may you find your dream valley and what is therein."
He rose up impatiently, and Howel gave him his arm from the room. Jago followed him, and when the heavy curtain fell across the doorway, Nona, who had risen with Gerent, turned to me.
"I am sure now that there we shall find Owen," she said, with a new light of hope in her eyes. "And also I am sure that at the bottom of all the matter is Morfed the priest."
"It was a needed warning against him that I had from your hand, Princess," I said; "now let me thank you for it."