woodlands were to Aimery only places to fly a hawk or follow a stag,
to Philip they were a wizard land where dreams grew. And the mysteries
of the Church were also food for his gold fancy, which by reshaping them
stripped them of all terrors. He was extraordinarily happy, for he had
the power to make again each fresh experience in a select inner world in
which he walked as king, since he was its creator.

He was a child of many fancies, but one especially stayed with him. When
still very small, he slept in a cot in his grandmother's room, the
walls of which were hung with tapestry from the Arras looms. One picture
caught his eye, for the morning sun struck it, and when he woke early
it glowed invitingly before him. It represented a little river twining
about a coppice. There was no figure in the piece, which was bounded
on one side by a great armoire, and on the other by the jamb of the
chimney; but from extreme corner projected the plume of a helmet and
the tip of a lance. There was someone there; someone riding towards the
trees. It grew upon Philip that that little wood was a happy place, most
happy and desirable. He fancied himself the knight, and he longed to be
moving up the links of the stream. He followed every step of the way,
across the shallow ford, past the sedges of a backwater, between two
clumps of willows, and then over smooth green grass to the edge of
the wood. But he never tried to picture what lay inside. That was
sacred--even from his thoughts.

When he grew older and was allowed to prowl about in the scriptorium of
the Abbey of Montmirail which lay by the Canche side, he found his wood
again. It was in a Psaltery on which a hundred years before some Flemish
monk had lavished his gold and vermilion. Opposite the verse of Psalm
xxiii., "In loco pascuae," was a picture almost the same as that in the
bedroom arras. There were the river, the meadows, and the little wood,
painted in colours far brighter than the tapestry. Never was such bloom
of green or such depth of blue. But there was a difference. No lance or
plume projected from the corner. The traveller had emerged from
cover, and was walking waist-deep in the lush grasses. He was a thin,
nondescript pilgrim, without arms save a great staff like the crozier
of a Bishop. Philip was disappointed in him and preferred the invisible
knight, but the wood was all he had desired. It was indeed a blessed
place, and the old scribe had known it, for a scroll