“For,” continued the Hebrew, slowly, “he has important matters to consider with you—matters that will not brook delay. Moreover, Gadarn bid me say that he has fallen on the tracks of the lad Cormac, and that we are almost sure to find him in the neighbourhood of your father’s town.”
“What say you?” exclaimed Bladud, dropping his drumstick—not the same one, but another which he had just begun—“repeat that.”
Beniah repeated it.
“Arkal,” said the prince, turning to the captain, “I will leave you in charge here, and start off by the first light to-morrow morning. See that poor Konar is well cared for. Maikar, you will accompany me, and I suppose, Dromas, that you also will go.”
“Of course,” said Dromas, with a meaning smile—so full of meaning, indeed, as to be quite beyond interpretation.
“By the way,” continued Bladud,—who had resumed the drumstick,—“has that fellow Gadarn found his daughter Branwen?”
Beniah choked on a bone, or something, at that moment, and, looking at the prince with the strangest expression of face, and tears in his eyes, explained that he had not—at least not to his, Beniah’s, absolutely certain knowledge.
“That is to say,” he continued in some confusion, “if—if—he has found her—which seems to me highly probable—there must be some—some mystery about her, for—it is impossible that—”
Here the Hebrew choked again with some violence.
“Have a care, man!” cried the prince in some alarm. “However hungry a man may be, he should take time to swallow. You seem to be contradicting yourself, but I don’t wonder, in the circumstances.”