little plain, and heaped them upon her till she was utterly hidden by them.  Then he came out on to the green place and looked on the body of his foe, and said to himself that all must be decent and in order about the place whereas lay his love.  And he came and stood over the body and said:  “I have naught to do to hate him now:  if he hated me, it was but for a little while, and he knew naught of me.  So let his bones be covered up from the wolf and the kite.  Yet shall they not lie alongside of her.  I will raise a cairn above him here on this fair little plain which he spoilt of all joy.”  Therewith he fell to, and straightened his body, and laid his huge limbs together and closed his eyes and folded his arms over his breast; and then he piled the stones above him, and went on casting them on the heap a long while after there was need thereof.

Ralph had taken his raiment from the stream-side and done them on before this, and now he did on helm and hauberk, and girt his sword to his side.  Then as he was about leaving the sorrowful place, he looked on Silverfax, who had not strayed from the little plain, and came up to him and did off saddle and bridle, and laid them within the cave, and bade the beast go whither he would.  He yet lingered about the place, and looked all around him and found naught to help him, and could frame in his mind no intent of a deed then, nor any tale of a deed he should do thereafter.  Yet belike in his mind were two thoughts, and though neither softened his grief save a little, he did not shrink from them as he did from all others; and these two were of his home at Upmeads, which was so familiar to him, and of the Well at the World’s End, which was but a word.

CHAPTER 11

Ralph Cometh Out of the Wilderness

Long he stood letting these thoughts run through his mind, but at last when it was now midmorning, he stirred and gat him slowly down the green slope, and for very pity of himself the tears brake out from him as he crossed the stream and came into the bushy valley.  There he stayed his feet a little, and said to himself:  “And whither then am I going?” He thought of the Castle of Abundance and the Champions of the Dry Tree, of Higham, and the noble warriors who sat at the Lord Abbot’s board, and of Upmeads and his own folk:  but all seemed naught to him, and he thought:  “And how can I go back and bear folk asking me curiously of my wayfarings, and whether I will do this, that, or the other thing.”  Withal he thought of that fair damsel and her sweet mouth in the hostelry at Bourton Abbas, and groaned when he thought of love and its ending, and he said within himself:  “and now she is a wanderer about the earth as I am;” and he thought of her quest, and the chaplet of dame Katherine, his gossip, which he yet bore on his neck, and he deemed that he had naught to choose but to go forward and seek that he was doomed to; and now it seemed to him that there was that one thing to do and no other.  And though this also seemed to him but weariness and grief, yet whereas he had ever lightly turned him to doing what work lay ready to hand; so now he knew that he must first of all get him out of that wilderness, that he might hear the talk of folk concerning the Well at the World’s End, which he doubted not to hear again when he came into the parts inhabited.