THEN Madame Niafer arose, black-robed and hollow-eyed, and she made a lament for Dom Manuel, whose like for gentleness and purity and loving kindliness toward his fellows she declared to remain nowhere in this world. It was an encomium under which the attendant warriors stayed very grave and rather fidgety, because they recognized and shared her grief, but did not wholly recognize the Manuel whom she described to them.

And the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion was decreed to be disbanded, because of the law of Poictesme that all things should go by tens forever. There was no fighting-man able to fill Manuel’s place: and a fellowship of nine members was, as Dame Niafer pointed out, illegal.

It well might be, however, she suggested, with a side glance toward Holmendis, that some other peculiarly holy person, even though not a warrior— At the same instant Coth said, with a startling and astringent decisiveness, “Bosh!”

His confrères felt the gross incivility of this interruption, 18but felt, too, that they agreed with Coth. And so the fellowship was proclaimed to be disbanded.

18

Then Anavalt of Fomor made a lament for the passing of that noble order whose ranks were broken at last, and for Dom Manuel also Anavalt raised a lament, praising Manuel for his hardihood and his cunning and his terribleness in battle. The heroes nodded their assent to this more intelligible sort of talking.

“Manuel,” said Anavalt, “was hardy. It was not wise for any enemy to provoke him. When that indiscretion was committed, Manuel made himself as a serpent about the city of that enemy, girdling his prey all round: he seized the purlieus of that city, and its cattle, and its boats upon the rivers. He beleaguered that city everywhere, he put fire to the orchards, he silenced the mill-races, he prevented the plowers from plowing the land; and the people of that city starved, and they ate up one another, until the survivors chose to surrender to Dom Manuel. Then Manuel raised his gallows, he whistled in his headsmen, and there were no more survivors of that people.”

And Anavalt said also: “Manuel was cunning. With a feather he put a deception upon three kings, but the queens that he played his tricks on were more than three, nor was it any feather that he diddled them with. Nobody could outwit Manuel. What he wanted he took, if he could get it that way, with his strong hand: but, if not, he used his artful head and his lazy, wheedling 19tongue, 

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