Many decades passed as Cawdaw studied and increased in knowledge. All the time he had wandered since leaving home had been spent observing castle defences, watching soldiers move in their formations, watching and noting their strengths and weaknesses. He watched how the army chuck wagons served their food, how the fletchers made their arrows and how war dogs might be best placed. He watched the miners smelt their ore and cast it into heavy ingots and how smiths beat them out into blades. His notebooks became swollen with sketches and scribbles. All the time, he watched and waited. Until he obtained the feeling of competence within his now dusty soul that came with the word 'sage'. To be a sage, one must know something. And that something wasn't just a vague opinion now. At the age of forty, he'd experienced life and some death too. The carousel of mundane existence continued on for everyone. But he'd extracted some gems from life's experiences. Cawdaw had finally come to the point where he had in mind to open his books to show others his accumulations. Perhaps they would find something interesting in his papers. Perhaps they would think of him as an old fool with more out of date information than all their elders crammed together.