They are one which were twain,
The Tree bloometh again,
And the Well-spring hath come
From the waste to the home.
Well, lord, thou shalt tell me presently if this hath aught to do with thee:
for indeed I saw the Dry Tree, which hath scared us so many a time,
beaten on thy sergeants' coats; but now I will go on and make an end
of my story."
Ralph nodded to him kindly, for now he remembered the carle, though he had
seen him but that once when he rode the Greenway across the downs to Higham.
The old man looked up at him as if he too had an inkling of old acquaintance
with Ralph, but went on presently:
"There is a woman who dwells alone with none to help her,
anigh to Saint Ann's Chapel; a woman not very old; for she
is of mine own age, and time was we have had many a fair play
in the ingles of the downs in the July weather--not very old,
I say, but wondrous wise, as I know better than most men;
for oft, even when she was young, would she foretell things
to come to me, and ever it fell out according to her spaedom.
To the said woman I sought to-day in the morning, not to win
any wisdom of her, but to talk over remembrances of old days;
but when I came into her house, lo, there was my carline walking
up and down the floor, and she turned round upon me like the young
woman of past days, and stamped her foot and cried out:
'What does the sluggard dallying about women's chambers
when the time is come for the deliverance?'
"I let her talk, and spake no word lest I should spoil her story,
and she went on:
"'Take thy staff, lad, for thou art stout as well as merry,
and go adown to the thorps at the feet of the downs toward Higham;
keep thee well from the Burg-devils, and go from stead to stead
till thou comest on a captain of men-at-arms who is lord over a
company of green-coats, green-coats of the Dry Tree--a young lord,
fair-faced, and kind-faced, and mighty, and not to be conquered,
and the blessing of the folk and the leader of the Shepherds,
and the foe of their foeman and the well-beloved of Bear-father.
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