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really found something before you go calling up the professors at Bangor, don’t you? And it won’t be dark for another couple of hours,” Barry said.
    “But the colonel’s tired. He won’t want to go up there again.”
    “My dear Miss Betsy,” Colonel Arbuthnot said, drawing himself up to his full stature, “never let it be said that a member of the Khyber Rifles was too tired for anything. Another Scotch and I could scale Mount Everest!”
    He downed the shot in one gulp amid applause and was swept out of the pub on a noisy tide of Welshmen. Roberts-the-Pump put down his tray of beers. Some of the men from the next room came out to see what was happening.
    “The colonel’s found King Arthur’s castle,” Roberts-the-Pump yelled. “We’re going up to take a look.”
    “King Arthur’s castle? I don’t believe it.” Evans-the-Milk laughed.
    “Well, I believe it,” Evans-the-Meat said. “I always knew if they found King Arthur anywhere, they’d find him here, in Wales.”
    “Well, I’m not running up a mountain on a wild-goose chase,” Evans-the-Milk said.
    “Not up to it, are you?” Evans-the-Meat jeered. “But then I always said you came from the weaker side of the family, didn’t I?”
    “Who says I’m not up to it?” Evans-the-Milk demanded and joined the fight to get through the narrow bar door.
    Like a pack of hounds on the scent they surged up through the village and on up the sheep path without slackening speed until after a stiff climb the colonel stood, breathing hard but triumphant at the site of his discovery. Willing hands wrenched away gorse and grasses.
    “It’s a ruin all right,” Evans-the-Meat declared. “Good solid walls too. Just the kind of thing King Arthur would have built.”
    “But not very big, is it?” Barry-the-Bucket chuckled. “I mean, it would have to be a very small round table to fit in here, wouldn’t it? There’s less room to swing a cat in here than the bar down at the Dragon and that’s saying a lot.”
    “It need not have been his main residence,” Colonel Arbuthnot said. “This was obviously a guard post. But if we can find some artifacts…”
    “Maybe a crown or two,” Barry suggested, nudging his friends.
    “Or a rotted wooden table?” One of the men chuckled.
    “Or Excalibur would do nicely,” another suggested.
    “Just a minute. Quiet all of you,” Rev. Parry Davies said with such authority that everyone fell silent. “I think we’ve made a significant find here. I have believed in the existence of this place and now I think we’ve found it at last.”
    “King Arthur’s castle?” voices demanded in disbelief.
    “No, not King Arthur’s castle,” Rev. Parry Davies said grandly. “This, my friends, is Gelert’s grave.”
    There was stunned silence, then general laughter.
    “What are you talking about, reverend?” someone demanded. “Everyone knows where Gelert’s grave is. I’ve seen it myself, down beside the church in Beddgelert.”
    The reverend shook his head. “No, that was just a nineteenth-century confidence trick, a legend invented by a local innkeeper to attract tourists.”
    “You’re saying Prince Llewellyn’s dog Gelert wasn’t really buried there?” Evans-the-Meat demanded.
    “I’m saying that the dog Gelert probably didn’t really exist,” Rev. Parry Davies declared, “and almost certainly wasn’t buried in a fancy grave.”
    “But the village has been called Beddgelert for hundreds of years,” Evans-the-Milk said. “And even I, not speaking Welsh as fluently as Evans-the-Meat, know that the word means Gelert’s grave.”
    “Precisely,” Rev. Parry Davies said as if he had just scored a point. “It has long been assumed, in religious circles, that Gelert was the same as Saint Celert, an early Christian saint. He was reputed to have lived in a simple hermitage high on the pass so that he could be close to God. This little stone building would have been just about the right size for a