Now it is naught so far from Utterbol, and it will be for a token
to them there. For that ness is called the Candle of the Giants,
and men deem that the kindling thereof forebodeth ill to the lord
who sitteth on the throne in the red hall of Utterbol."
Ralph laid his hand on Ursula's shoulder and said:
"May the Sage's saw be sooth!"
She put her hand upon the hand and said: "Three months ago
I lay on my bed at Bourton Abbas, and all the while here
was this huge manless waste lying under the bare heavens
and threatened by the storehouse of the fires of the earth:
and I had not seen it, nor thee either, O friend; and now it
hath become a part of me for ever."
Then was Ralph exceeding glad of her words, and the Sage laughed
inwardly when he beheld them thus.
So they came adown from the rock and lay down presently under
the fiery heavens: and their souls were comforted by the sound
of the horses cropping the grass so close to their ears,
that it broke the voice of the earth-fires' thunder, that ever
and anon rolled over the grey sea amidst which they lay.
On the morrow they still rode the lava like to clinkers,
and it rose higher about them, till suddenly nigh sunset it
ended at a turn of their winding road, and naught lay betwixt
them and that mighty ness of the mountains, save a wide
grassy plain, here and there swelling into low wide risings
not to be called hills, and besprinkled with copses of bushes,
and with trees neither great nor high.
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