Then alone Sire Richard crossed the seas, and at
thirty-three set out to inspect a transformed and gratefully
untrammelling world wherein not a foot of land belonged to him.
Holland was the surname he assumed, the name of his half-brothers; and
to detail his Asian wanderings would be tedious and unprofitable. But
at the end of each four months would come to him a certain messenger
from Glyndwyr, supposed by Richard to be the imp Orvendile, who
notoriously ran every day around the world upon the Welshman's
business. It was in the Isle of Taprobane, where the pismires are as
great as hounds, and mine and store the gold of which the inhabitants
afterward rob them through a very cunning device, that this emissary
brought the letter which read simply, "Now is England fit pasture for
the White Hart." Presently Richard Holland was in Wales, and then he
rode to Sycharth.
There, after salutation, Glyndwyr gave an account of his long
stewardship. It was a puzzling record of obscure and tireless
machinations with which we have no immediate concern: in brief, the
barons who had ousted King Log had been the very first to find their
squinting King Stork intolerable; and Northumberland, Worcester,
Douglas, Mortimer, and so on, were already pledged and in open revolt.
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