Long lasted this waste, and Ralph thought indeed that it
had been hard to cross, had not their way-leaders been;
therefore he made marks and signs by the wayside, and took note
of the bearings of rocks and mounds against the day of return.
Twelve days they rode this waste, and on the thirteenth it began
to mend somewhat, and there was a little grass, and sweet waters,
and they saw ahead the swelling hills of a great woodland,
albeit they had to struggle through marshland and low scrubby
thicket for a day longer, or ever they got to the aforesaid trees,
which at first were naught but pines; but these failed in a while,
and they rode a grass waste nearly treeless, but somewhat
well watered, where they gat them good store of venison.
Thereafter they came on woods of oak and sweet-chestnut,
with here and there a beech-wood.
Long and long they rode the woodland, but it was hard on May
when they entered it, and it was pleasant therein, and what with
one thing, what with another, they had abundant livelihood there.
Yet was June at its full when at last they came within sight
of the House of the Sorceress, on the hottest of a fair afternoon.
And it was even as Ralph had seen it pictured in the arras
of the hall of the Castle of Abundance; a little house built
after the fashion of houses in his own land of the west;
the thatch was trim, and the windows and doors were unbroken,
and the garth was whole, and the goats feeding therein,
and the wheat was tall and blossoming in the little closes,
where as he had looked to see all broken down and wild,
and as to the house, a mere grass-grown heap, or at the most
a broken gable fast crumbling away.
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