led in fur
and feather before my face, here dwelt, mummy of all earth's summers,
some old ghost of me, sipper of sap, coucher in moss, quieter than
dust.

So sitting, so rhapsodising, I began to hear presently another
sound--the rich, juicy munch-munch of jaws, a little blunted maybe,
which yet, it seemed, could never cry Enough! to these sweet,
succulent grasses. I made no sign, waited with eyes towards the sound,
and pulses beating as if for a sweetheart. And soon, placid,
unsurprised, at her extreme ease, loomed into sight who but my
ox-headed Rosinante in these dells, cropping her delightful way along
in search of her drowned master.

I could but whistle and receive the slow, soft scrutiny of her
familiar eyes. I fancied even her bland face smiled, as might
elderliness on youth. She climbed near with bridle broken and
trailing, thrust out her nose to me, and so was mine again.

Sunlight left the woods. Wind passed through the upper branches. So,
with rain in the air, I went forward once more; not quite so headily,
perhaps, yet, I hope, with undiminished courage, like all earth's
travellers before me, who have deemed truth potent as modesty, and
themselves worth scanning print after.

IX

_A ... shop of rarities._

--GEORGE HERBERT.

A little before darkness fell we struck into a narrow road traversing
the wood. This, though apparently not much frequented, would at least
lead me into lands inhabited, so turning my face to the West, that I
might have light to survey as long as any gleamed in the sky, I
trudged on. But I went slow enough: Rosinante was lame; I like a
stranger to my body, it was so bruised and tumbled.

The night was black, and a thin rain falling when at last I emerged
from the interminable maze of lanes into which the wood-road had led
me. And glad I was to descry what seemed by the many lights shining
from its windows to be a populous village. A gay village also, for
song came wafted on the night air, rustic and convivial.

Hereabouts I overtook a figure on foot, who, when I addressed him,
turned on me as sharply as if he supposed the elms above him were
thick with robbers, or that mine was a voice out of the unearthly
hailing him.

I asked him the name of the village we were approaching. With small
dark eyes searching my face in the black shadow of night, he answered
in a voice so strange and guttural that I failed to understand a word.
He shook his fingers in the air;