“And whether it was a dream or no I can’t tell you,” said he, “for I was sleeping, and yet here, all the same, is the mark of the horse’s hoof on my forehead.”
Well, the friend thought it a strange tale. “And it’s hard to believe there’s any truth in it,” said he; “but here we are in front of the cliffs, and this night will prove the worth of your dreaming.”
He held the boat there in front of the rocks with his oars, and the minutes slipped by, and neither of the men spoke, and everything was silent. Then from far away, and faintly, they heard the village clock strike twelve.
Again they waited, and then suddenly and without a sound the front of the cliff opened, and they saw a portico down almost on a level with the water, and a great door opening out upon it. Inside the door were steps cut in the rock and leading up and out of sight. A light shone out through the door and across the water, but it was not very bright.
“Here is where I chance it,” said the blacksmith. “Row me up close so that I may step out on the portico, for according to my dream, it’s in there I must go if I am to find little Philip Renardy.”
The whole matter was so strange that his friend tried to dissuade him from going, but the blacksmith would not listen to him.
“I’ve a sign from him on my forehead,” he said, “and go I must and will. Do you wait here for me till cock’s crow, and if I haven’t come by then, there’s no use in your waiting longer.”
His friend rowed him up close to the edge of the portico, and the blacksmith climbed out on it, and watchfully he crept over to the door and peered in. Everything was still, and he saw nothing but the steps leading upward, and they were so high, each one of them, that it was as much as he could do to climb them.
He carried a plowshare that he had brought with him from his smithy, for somehow he thought a plowshare might be a good weapon if he needed one. And anyhow, it gave him some sort of a feeling of courage to have hold of it.
He climbed the steps, one after another, and that took him some time, and then he came into a great hall, and in the center of it was a table hewn out of rock.