“I have told you.”
The man’s appetite grew as it fed upon Maulfry’s
praise of his taste.
“Ah—ah! Dame, I’m a man
of taste—eh?”
Maulfry said nothing. Galors changed the note.
“How shall I thank you, my dear one?”
he asked her.
“Ah,” said she, “I shall need what
you can spare before long.”
Then she left him.
HIGH MARCH, AND A GREAT LADY
In the weeping grey of an autumn morning, but in great
spirits of his own, Prosper left Gracedieu for High
March. The satisfaction of having braved the
worst of an adventure was fairly his; to have made
good disposition of what threatened to fetter him
by shutting off any possible road from his advance;
and to have done this (so far as he could see) without
in any sense withdrawing from Isoult the advantages
she could expect—this was tunable matter,
which set him singing before the larks were off the
ground. He felt like a man who has earned his
pleasure; and pleasure, as he understood it, he meant
to have. The zest for it sparkled in his quick
eyes as he rode briskly through the devious forest
ways. Had Galors or any other dark-entry man
met him now and chanced a combat, he would have bad
it with a will, but he would have got off with a rough
tumble and sting or two from the flat of the sword.
The youth was too pleased with himself for killing
or slicing.
However, there was nobody to fight. North Morgraunt
was pretty constantly patrolled by the Countess’s
riders at this time. A few grimy colliers; some
chair-turners amid their huts and white chips on the
edge of a hidden hamlet; drovers with forest ponies
going for Waisford or Market Basing; the hospitality
and interminable devotions of a hermit by a mossy
crucifix on Two Manors Waste; one night alone in a
ruined chapel on the top of a down:—of such
were the encounters and events of his journey.
He was no Don Quixote to make desperadoes or feats
of endurance out of such gear; on the contrary, he
persistently enjoyed himself. Sour beer wetted
his lips dry with talking; leaves made a capital bed;
the hermit, in the intervals of his prayers, remembered
his own fighting days in the Markstake, and knew what
was done to make Maximilian the Second safely king.
Everything was as it should be.
On the third day he fell in with a troop of horse,
whose spears carried the red saltire of the house
of Forz on their banneroles. Since they were
bound as he was for the Castle, he rode in their company,
and in due course saw before him on a height among
dark pines the towers of High March, with the flag
of the Lady Paramount afloat on the breeze. It
was on a dusty afternoon of October and in a whirl
of flying leaves, that he rode up to the great gate
of the outer bailey, and blew a blast on the horn
which hung there, that they might let down the bridge.
