The Forest Lovers

After a long wrangle it seemed that the women were to have their way.

Again the door-bolts were drawn, again the door opened by the old man,

and this time opened wide. With bows lower than the occasion demanded,

Prosper was invited to be pleased to enter. He saw to his horse first,

and made what provision he could for him in an outhouse. Then he

stooped his head and entered the cottage.

He came directly into a bare room, which was, you may say, crouched

under a pent of turves and ling, and stank very vilely. The floor was

of beaten clay, like the walls; for furniture it had a table and

bench. Sooty cobwebs dripped from the joists, and great spiders ran

nimbly over them; there were no beds, but on a heap of rotting skins

in one corner two rats were busy, and in another were some dry leaves

and bracken. There was no chimney either, though there was a peat fire

smouldering in what you must call the hearth. The place was dense with

the fog of it; it was some time, therefore, before Prosper could leave

blinking and fit his eyes to see the occupants of his lodging....

Isoult, he saw, stood in the middle of the room leaning on the table

with both her hands; her bead was hanging, and her hair veiled all her

face. Near her, also standing, was the old man--a sturdy knowing old

villain, with a world of cunning and mischief in his pair of pig's

eyes. His scanty hair, his beard, were white; his eyebrows were white

and altogether monstrous. He blinked at Prosper, but said nothing. The

third was a woman, infinitely old as it seemed, crouched over the

fired peats with her back to the room. She never looked up at all, but

muttered and sighed vainly to herself and warmed her hands. Lastly, in

a round-backed chair, cross-legged, twirling his thumbs, twinkling

with comfortable repletion, sat Prosper's friend of the road, Brother

Bonaccord of Lucca.

"God save you, gentleman," he chirped. "I see we have the same taste

in lodgings. None of your Holy Thorns for us--hey? But a shakedown

under a snug thatch, with a tap of red wine such as I have not had out

of my own country. What a port for what a night--hey?"

Prosper nodded back a greeting as he looked from one to another of

these ill-assorted hosts of his, and whenever he chanced on the

motionless girl he felt that he could not understand it. Look at her!

how sweet and delicate she was, how small and well-set her head, her

feet and hands how fine, her shape how tender. "How should a lily

spring in so foul a bed?" thought he to himself. Morgraunt had already

taught him an odd thing or two; no doubt it was Morgraunt's way.