The Forest Lovers

He kissed him twice and went his way without any more farewells than

the boy's snivelling. He never looked behind at Starning demesne,

where he had been born and bred and might have followed his father to

church, nor sideways at the broad oaks, nor over to the well-tilled

fields on either side his road; but rather pricked forward at a nimble

pace which tuned to the running of his blood. The blood of a lad sings

sharpest in the early morning; the air tingles, the light thrills, all

the great day is to come. This lad therefore rode with a song towards

the West, following his own shadow, down the deep Starning lanes,

through the woods and pastures of Parrox, over the grassy spaces of

the Downs, topping the larks in thought, and shining beam for beam

against the new-risen sun. The time of his going-out was September of

the harvest: a fresh wet air was abroad. He looked at the thin blue of

the sky, he saw dew and gossamer lie heavy on the hedge-rows. All his

heart laughed. Prosper was merry.

Whither he should go, what find, how fare, he knew not at all.

Morgraunt was before him, and of Morgraunt all the country spoke in a

whisper. It as far, it was deep, it was dark as night, haunted with

the waving of perpetual woods; it lay between the mountains and the

sea, a mystery as inviolate as either. In it outlaws, men desperate

and hungry, ran wild. It was a den of thieves as well as of wolves.

Men, young men too, had ridden in, high-hearted, proud of their

trappings, horses, curls, and what not; none had ever seen them come

out. They might be roaming there yet, grown old with roaming, and

gaunt with the everlasting struggle to kill before they were killed:

who could tell? Or they might have struck upon the vein of savage

life; they might go roaring and loving and robbing with the beasts--

why not? Morgraunt had swallowed them up; who could guess to what wild

uses she turned her thralls? That was a place, pardieu! Prosper, very

certain that at twenty-three it is a great thing to be hale and

astride a horse, felt also that to grow old without having given

Morgraunt a chance of killing you young would be an insipid

performance. "As soon be a priest!" he would cry, "or, by the Rood,

one of those flat-polled monks kept there by the Countess Isabel."

Morgraunt then for Prosper, and the West; beyond that--"One thing at a

time," thought he, for he was a wise youth in his way, and held to the

legend round his arms. Seeing that south of him he could now smell the

sea, and beyond him lay Morgraunt, he would look no further till

Morgraunt lay below him appeased or subjugate.