"
Therewith he turned and departed hastily.
But Ralph left alone was sorely moved with hope and fear, and a longing that
grew in him to see the damsel. For though he was firmly set on departure,
and on seeking the sage aforesaid, yet his heart was drawn this way and that:
and it came into his mind how the damsel would fare when the evil Lord came
home to Utterbol; and he could not choose but make stories of her meeting of
the tyrant, and her fear and grief and shame, and the despair of her heart.
So the minutes went slow to him, till he should be in some new place and
doing somewhat toward bringing about the deliverance of her from thralldom,
and the meeting of him and her.
BOOK THREE
The Road To The Well At World's End.
CHAPTER 1
An Adventure in the Wood Under the Mountains
Now was the night worn to the time appointed, for it was two hours after
midnight, so he stepped out of his tent clad in all his war gear, and went
straight to the doddered oak, and found Redhead there with but one horse,
whereby Ralph knew that he held to his purpose of going his ways to Utterbol:
so he took him by the shoulders and embraced him, rough carle as he was,
and Redhead kneeled to him one moment of time and then arose and went off into
the night. But Ralph got a-horseback without delay and rode his ways warily
across the highway and into the wood, and there was none to hinder him.
Though it was dark but for the starlight, there was a path, which the horse,
and not Ralph, found, so that he made some way even before the first glimmer
of dawn, all the more as the wood was not very thick after the first mile,
and there were clearings here and there.
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