CHAPTER 2
They Hear New Tidings of Utterbol
It was on a fair evening of later autumn-tide that they won their way out
of the Gates of the Mountains, and came under the rock of the Fighting Man.
There they kissed and comforted each other in memory of the terror
and loneliness wherewith they had entered the Mountains that other time;
though, sooth to say, it was to them now like the reading of sorrow
in a book.
But when they came out with joyful hearts into the green plain
betwixt the mountains and the River of Lava, they looked westward,
and beheld no great way off a little bower or cot, builded of boughs
and rushes by a blackthorn copse; and as they rode toward it they
saw a man come forth therefrom, and presently saw that he was hoary,
a man with a long white beard. Then Ralph gave a glad cry,
and set spurs to his horse and galloped over the plain;
for he deemed that it could be none other than the Sage of Swevenham;
and Ursula came pricking after him laughing for joy.
The old man abode their coming, and Ralph leapt off his horse
at once, and kissed and embraced him; but the Sage said:
"There is no need to ask thee of tidings; for thine eyes and thine whole
body tell me that thou hast drunk of the Well at the World's End.
And that shall be better for thee belike than it has been for me;
though for me also the world has not gone ill after my fashion
since I drank of that water."
Then was Ursula come up, and she also lighted down and made much
of the Sage.
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