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sound.
    The Druid’s voice fell silent. He set down the harp he never held. The music evaporated into the emptiness of a musty barn.
    Dylan felt no need to know, until some other time, the ordinary meanings of the magical words.
    At Morgan’s suggestion they slept in the loft. “The owner doesn’t mind if we bed down,” he said, “as long as we don’t turn it into a hotel.”
    Dylan looked up at the floorboards of the loft. In the weak light of the rag candle, they looked rickety. “Is it safe, Mr. Bleddyn?” he asked, pronouncing the name Bleh-then, as the creature did.
    “Call me Dru,” said the man.
    “Dru,” Dylan corrected.
    “Safe? Well, laddo, let’s hope the likes of you,” said the Druid, “can find a song of danger and adventure with the likes of me.”

Chapter Four
    Father Quesnel was not in at nine o’clock. Nor at ten o’clock. Nor at eleven o’clock.
    The marguillier , a pockmarked fellow of officious manner, seemed to think Dylan was presumptuous to come back so often and ask. But he didn’t say so. He wouldn’t have given Dylan the courtesy of that many words, nor the kindness of saying when the good father would be in.
    Dylan had a suspicion that his godfather was right behind that closed door, and the apprehension that he was in to everyone but Dylan Elfed Davis Campbell.
    He thought of the abbreviation of his patronymic by Morgan Bleddyn. The way this Druid renamed him, left out his bloody father’s Campbell, tickled Dylan. Where was Dru? he wondered. Would he ever see Morgan Bleddyn again? When Dylan woke this morning, the old boy had been gone. By the light of day, the world of romance was gone and a mundane world was in its place.
    No sense sitting around where he wasn’t welcome. Dylan closed the outer door on Pockmark Pompous and looked out on the day. The reason he didn’t mind waiting for Father Quesnel was the weather. It was a gorgeous rendition of the first real day of spring, one of the vernal goddess’s best efforts, he was sure, a miracle after yesterday’s storms—balmy, with only a warm, gentle breeze, high, pillowy clouds, and sunlight flung prodigally between the clouds. The light made the dun-colored winter grass and the gray branches of the trees shine. The branches were barren—except for robins.
    A grand day to be starting out on your life’s adventure. Not the fanciful sort of adventure the Druid conjured up. Real adventure, witnessing for civilization in the midst of barbarism.
    He was bored with wandering the streets, looking in the open doors of the coffeehouses where rich people ate when he had no money, feeling disheveled because he’d slept in his clothes. Maybe Claude would go to his father’s house later and get his steamer trunk with all his worldly belongings. Dylan resolved he would never go there again.
    He was hungry. He thought of the chunk of pemmican he’d breakfasted on. He looked at the warm sun. He decided to be hungry sitting down. There would be a bench by the site of the old church graveyard.
    Would he ever see Bleddyn again? Being with the old man was entirely new and wonderful, a variety of enchantment. Perhaps this Druid was a wizard. Being with him was being in another world. It was like walking into a lake—the water was cold at first, but you kept walking until your eyes were underwater. It was frightening. Your reward was seeing a different world beneath the waters, perhaps a castle in shining, white marble, with mermaids singing and eels guarding the gate.
    He shook himself. That dream world was child’s stuff, and there was nothing to be gained from it. Except stories of his mother’s native country.
    He sat on the bench and yearned for more pemmican. Strange stuff, but good. Great, when you’re hungry.
    He looked around at the gravestones, many of them slightly tilted, the grounds a little unkempt. This cemetery had been full since before he was born. A melancholy sight.
    Wasn’t it fine? He had no home, no family,