CHAPTER 10
Of the Desert-House and the Chamber of Love in the Wilderness
Then in a while they grew sober and went on their ways,
and the sun was westering behind them, and casting long shadows.
And in a little while they were come out of the thick woods and were
in a country of steep little valleys, grassy, besprinkled with
trees and bushes, with hills of sandstone going up from them,
which were often broken into cliffs rising sheer from the
tree-beset bottoms: and they saw plenteous deer both great
and small, and the wild things seemed to fear them but little.
To Ralph it seemed an exceeding fair land, and he was as joyous
as it was fair; but the Lady was pensive, and at last she said:
"Thou deemest it fair, and so it is; yet is it the lonesomest
of deserts. I deem indeed that it was once one of the fairest
of lands, with castles and cots and homesteads all about,
and fair people no few, busy with many matters amongst them.
But now it is all passed away, and there is no token of a dwelling
of man, save it might be that those mounds we see, as yonder,
and yonder again, are tofts of house-walls long ago sunken
into the earth of the valley. And now few even are the hunters
or way-farers that wend through it."
Quoth Ralph: "Thou speakest as if there had been once histories
and tales of this pleasant wilderness: tell me, has it anything
to do with that land about the wide river which we went through,
Roger and I, as we rode to the Castle of Abundance the other day?
For he spoke of tales of deeds and mishaps concerning it.
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