But tell me,
hast thou had any scar of a hurt upon thy body? For if now that
were gone, surely it should be a token of the renewal of thy life.
But if it be not gone, then there may yet be another token."
Then he stood upon his feet, and she cried out:
"O but thou art fair and mighty, who now shall dare gainsay thee?
Who shall not long for thee?"
Said Ralph: "Look, love! how the sea comes over the sand like the creeping
of a sly wood-snake! Shall we go hence and turn from the ocean-sea without
wetting our bodies in its waters?"
"Let us go," she said.
So they went down on to the level sands, and along the edges of
the sweet-water stream that flowed from the Well; and Ralph said:
"Beloved, I will tell thee of that which thou hast asked me:
when I was but a lad of sixteen winters there rode men a-lifting
into Upmeads, and Nicholas Longshanks, who is a wise man of war,
gathered force and went against them, and I must needs ride beside him.
Now we came to our above, and put the thieves to the road;
but in the hurly I got a claw from the war-beast, for the stroke
of a sword sheared me off somewhat from my shoulder:
belike thou hast seen the scar and loathed it."
"It is naught loathsome," she said, "for a lad to be a bold warrior,
nor for a grown man to think lightly of the memory of death drawn near
for the first time. Yea, I have noted it but let me see now what has
befallen with it."
As she spoke they were come to a salt pool in a rocky bight on their
right hand, which the tide was filling speedily; and Ralph spake:
"See now, this is the bath of the water of the ocean sea.
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