d said: 'I wot
not how thou mayst help it.'

"I said: 'Tell me of the Dry Tree, how the champions have sped, and
have they grown greater or less.' Said he: 'They are warriors and
champions from father to son; therefore have they thriven not over
well; yet they have left the thick of the wood, and built them a great
castle above the little town hight Hampton; so that is now called
Hampton under Scaur, for upon the height of the said Scaur is our
castle builded: and there we hold us against the Burg of the Four
Friths which hath thriven greatly; there is none so great as the Burg
in all the lands about.'

"I said: 'And the Land of the Tower, thriveth the folk thereof at
all?' 'Nay,' he said, 'they have been rent to pieces by folly and war
and greediness: in the Great City are but few people, grass grows in
its streets; the merchants wend not the ways that lead thither. Naught
thriveth there since thou stolest thyself away from them.'

"'Nay,' I said, 'I fled from their malice, lest I should have been
brought out to be burned once more; and there would have been none to
rescue then.' 'Was it so?' said old Geoffrey; 'well it is all one now;
their day is done.'

"'Well,' I said, 'come into my house, and eat and drink therein and
sleep here to-night, and to-morrow I shall tell thee what I will do.'

"Even so they did; and on the morrow early I spake to Geoffrey and
said: 'What hath befallen the Land of Abundance, and the castle my lord
built for me there; which we held as our refuge all through the War of
the Tower, both before we joined us to you in the wildwood, and
afterwards?' He said: 'It is at peace still; no one hath laid hand on
it; there is a simple folk dwelling there in the clearing of the wood,
which forgetteth thee not; though forsooth strange tales are told of
thee there; and the old men deem that it is but a little since thou
hast ceased to come and go there; and they are ready to worship thee as
somewhat more than the Blessed Saints, were it not for the Fathers of
the Thorn who are their masters.'

"I pondered this a while, and then said: 'Geoffrey, ye shall bring me
hence away to the peopled parts, and on the way, or when we are come
amongst the cities and the kingdoms, we will settle it whither I shall
go. See thou! I were fain to be of the brotherhood of the Dry Tree;
yet I deem it will scarce be that I shall go and dwell there
straightway.'

"Therewith the old man seemed content; and inde