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But this day something new had
been joined to his affection. The air that met him from the east had that
in it which stirred some antique memory. There was brine in it from the
unruly eastern sea, and the sourness of marsh water, and the sweetness of
marsh herbage. As the forest thinned into scrub again it came stronger and
fresher, and he found himself sniffing it like a hungry man at the approach
of food. "If my manor of Highstead is like this," he told himself, "I think
I will lay my bones there."
At a turn of the road where two grassy tracks forked, he passed a graven
stone now chipped and moss-grown, set on noble eminence among reddening
thorns. It was an altar to the old gods of the land, there had been another
such in the forest of his childhood. The priest had told him it was the
shrine of the Lord Apollo and forbade him on the pain of a mighty cursing
to do reverence to it. Nevertheless he had been wont to doff his cap when
he passed it, for he respected a god that lived in the woods instead of a
clammy church.


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