"Be happy, noble heart," murmured a mysterious stranger in a travel-stained cloak and a dwarf-mask. "Be blessed with abundant pipe-mushroom harvests for the good that you have done and will do, and let my good deed be shrouded in oblivion, even as Luthienne was cloaked in the bat-fell – very chicly, or so the songs tell us – when she seduced Morgot. You will be the maire, and will read out of your ledger book, so that people will remember the Great Danger, and love their beloved ship all the more."
"And now," he concluded, "farewell goodness, humanity, gratitude, all feelings that cause the heart to swell! I have taken the place of the Valards to reward the good; let now the Érou of vengeance suffer me to punish the wicked, make them crawl!"
