"Ah, yes! but what will become, in all this fighting, of Jurgen?"
"That will not matter either," said Silenus, comfortably. "Nobody will bother about you." And with that he closed his horrible bleared eyes and went to sleep.
So Jurgen left the old tippler, and started to leave the forest also. "For undoubtedly all the people in Leukê are resolute to do that which is customary," reflected Jurgen, "for the unarguable reason it is their custom, and has always been their custom. And they will desist from these practises when the cat eats acorns, but not before. So it is the part of wisdom to inquire no further into the matter. For after all, these people may be right; and certainly I cannot go so far as to say they are wrong." Jurgen shrugged. "But still, at the same time—!"
Now in returning to his cabin Jurgen heard a frightful sort of yowling and screeching as of mad people.
"Hail, daughter of various-formed Protogonus, thou that takest joy in mountains and battles and in the beating of the drum! Hail, thou deceitful saviour, mother of all gods, that comest now, pleased with long wanderings, to be propitious to us!"
But the uproar was becoming so increasingly unpleasant that Jurgen at this point withdrew into a thicket: and thence he witnessed the passing through the Woods of a notable procession. There were features connected with this procession sufficiently unusual to cause Jurgen to vow that the desiderated moment wherein he walked unhurt from the forest would mark the termination of his last visit thereto. Then amazement tripped up the heels of terror: for now passed Mother Sereda, or, as Anaïtis had called her, Æsred. To-day, in place of a towel about her head, she wore a species of crown, shaped like a circlet of crumbling towers: she carried a large key, and her chariot was drawn by two lions. She was attended by howling persons, with shaved heads: and it was apparent that these persons had parted with possessions which Jurgen valued.
"This is undoubtedly," said he, "a most unwholesome forest."
Jurgen inquired about this procession, later, and from Chloris he got information which surprised him.
"And these are the beings who I had thought were poetic ornaments of speech! But what is the old lady doing in such high company?"
He described Mother Sereda, and Chloris told him who this was. Now
Jurgen shook his sleek black head.