Then sadly she left him. He was alone on his tower and night was coming.

He tried to think of his vow, but her eyes called him, her lips brushed
his like the light wing of a nesting bird. Hour after hour he endured the
pain--and at last tears rolled from his eyes and melted his armor. The
Golden Archer felt his old humanity return like a flood and set him free;
and in the silence that comes before the dawn, he got down from his
horse. The limbs of the golden animal were moving also; and stealthily,
with the cramped action of those too long in one position, horse and man
went down the stairs of the church, through the stone vestibule and out
into the sweet, warm plain.

The Golden Archer knelt beneath the stars and wept himself back to his
old beautiful manhood, then, mounting his horse, he galloped to the edge
of the forest where in a cottage smothered beneath roses and honeysuckle
Felice lived; once at her window he whispered: "The Golden Archer has
come for thee, dearest."

Then she came out trembling, and in the gray light he took her in his
arms and comforted her. "We will ride away and be married," he said. Then
he lifted her on his horse, and they rode away through the forest, she
lying quite still against his heart, and gazing with wide-open eyes into
the green dimness. So they came to a church and were married.

That night they went to an inn on the borders of the forest, an old house
with nine gables, deep moss on the roof, and a creaking signboard with a
crowing bird painted on it; and the inn was called "The Crowing Cock."

Now there were many countrymen seated in the inn-parlor, and as the
Golden Archer entered the room everyone rose and bowed; and as they