The sun, by which the knight had chiefly directed his course, had now
sunk behind the Derbyshire hills on his left, and every effort which he
might make to pursue his journey was as likely to lead him out of his
road as to advance him on his route. After having in vain endeavoured
to select the most beaten path, in hopes it might lead to the cottage of
some herdsman, or the silvan lodge of a forester, and having repeatedly
found himself totally unable to determine on a choice, the knight
resolved to trust to the sagacity of his horse; experience having,
on former occasions, made him acquainted with the wonderful talent
possessed by these animals for extricating themselves and their riders
on such emergencies.
The good steed, grievously fatigued with so long a day's journey under
a rider cased in mail, had no sooner found, by the slackened reins,
that he was abandoned to his own guidance, than he seemed to assume new
strength and spirit; and whereas, formerly he had scarce replied to the
spur, otherwise than by a groan, he now, as if proud of the confidence
reposed in him, pricked up his ears, and assumed, of his own accord, a
more lively motion. The path which the animal adopted rather turned off
from the course pursued by the knight during the day; but as the horse
seemed confident in his choice, the rider abandoned himself to his
discretion.
He was justified by the event; for the footpath soon after appeared
a little wider and more worn, and the tinkle of a small bell gave the
knight to understand that he was in the vicinity of some chapel or
hermitage.
Accordingly, he soon reached an open plat of turf, on the opposite side
of which, a rock, rising abruptly from a gently sloping plain, offered
its grey and weatherbeaten front to the traveller. Ivy mantled its sides
in some places, and in others oaks and holly bushes, whose roots found
nourishment in the cliffs of the crag, waved over the precipices below,
like the plumage of the warrior over his steel helmet, giving grace to
that whose chief expression was terror. At the bottom of the rock,
and leaning, as it were, against it, was constructed a rude hut, built
chiefly of the trunks of trees felled in the neighbouring forest, and
secured against the weather by having its crevices stuffed with moss
mingled with clay. The stem of a young fir-tree lopped of its branches,
with a piece of wood tied across near the top, was planted upright by
the door, as a rude emblem of the holy cross. At a little distance on
the right hand, a fountain of the purest water trickled out of the
rock, and was received in a hollow stone, which labour had formed into a
rustic basin. Escaping from thence, the stream murmured down the descent
by a channel which its course had long worn, and so wandered through the
little plain to lose itself in the neighbouring wood.