the sunrise, and to send echoing eastwards the exultant greetings of
his jubilant horn. And lo! the sunrise coming up from the echoes, and
the plains new-lit by the day, and the leagues spinning by like water
flung from a top, and that gay companion, the loudly laughing wind,
and men and the fears of men and their little cities; and, after that,
great rivers and waste spaces and huge new hills, and then new lands
beyond them, and more cities of men, and always the old companion, the
glorious wind. Kingdom by kingdom slipt by, and still his breath was
even. "It is a golden thing to gallop on good turf in one's youth,"
said the young man-horse, the centaur. "Ha, ha," said the wind of the
hills, and the winds of the plain answered.

Bells pealed in frantic towers, wise men consulted parchments,
astrologers sought of the portent from the stars, the aged made subtle
prophecies. "Is he not swift?" said the young. "How glad he is," said
the children.

Night after night brought him sleep, and day after day lit his gallop,
till he came to the lands of the Athalonian men who live by the edges
of the mundane plain, and from them he came to the lands of legend
again such as those in which he was cradled on the other side of the
world, and which fringe the marge of the world and mix with the
twilight. And there a mighty thought came into his untired heart, for
he knew that he neared Zretazoola now, the city of Sombelene.

It was late in the day when he neared it, and clouds coloured with
evening rolled low on the plain before him; he galloped on into their
golden mist, and when it hid from his eyes the sight of things, the
dreams in his heart awoke and romantically he pondered all those
rumours that used to come to him from Sombelene, because of the