When he thought of Modred he felt somehow a little ashamed, not of the Prince but of himself. Artos had envied Modred’s men, wanted a little to be a part of that war band, but Modred had been ready to throw away all Pendragon had fought for just that he might be himself king.

Artie frowned—he was thinking about Modred and Artos—sometimes it was easy to choose the wrong side—just because you wanted to be a part of something which showed—showed—he wasn’t quite sure yet how that would work out. But now most of all he knew it had all happened once.

He slipped off the chair and his foot touched the football. It rolled out into the hall. Artie hurried after it. He did not look again at the red dragon (he did not have to, he would remember it always). Picking up the ball, he retraced his way through the house.

Not until he was in the overgrown garden did Artie think of something else. Those other two dragons that had been put together—did they have stories, too? Was that why Sig and Ras had gone there? Maybe they knew more about Artos—what had happened to him! Artie started on at a trot. He would hunt up the two boys, find out what they knew.

He slowed as he came to Sig’s house, half hoping he might see the other boy. But there was no sign of him. Reluctantly Artie moved on. Tomorrow they were going to the Grands’ for dinner, no chance to see Sig. Monday morning, though, at the bus stop—if he got there a little early and Sig did too, maybe he could hint around and find out whether Sig had had any adventure with the other dragons. He wanted to know so badly!

Never had a weekend passed so slowly for Artie. He ran into trouble several times when he was thinking about Pendragon and the rest. People asked him questions and he did not answer. He was glad when Sunday night came and they were back home. He went to his room, saying he had homework (he even tried to work some problems in math, read some history). Only, there kept coming between him and the pages little parts of the dream. He could feel again the pain in his arm as he watched Marius and the others hacking at the earth with their swords.

Artie sighed. One thing he wanted to do was to find out more about Arthur—his Arthur, not the fairy-tale one. There might be a book at the library. Artie did not know much about the library. He went there when he had to get a book for a report, but then he just hunted for the thinnest one he could find. Greg Ross’s crowd had a list of thin books they passed around, he had seen them doing it.