e about the
cavalcade, so that the very road edge was obscured, now dissolving into
clear light, now opening up corridors at the end of which some landmark
appeared at an immeasurable distance. In that fantastic afternoon
the solid earth seemed to be dissolving, and Jehan's thoughts as he
journeyed ranged like the mists.

He told himself that he had discovered his country. He, the Outborn, had
come home; the landless had found his settlement. He loved every acre
of this strange England--its changing skies, the soft pastures in the
valleys, the copses that clung like moss to the hills, the wide moorland
that lay quiet as a grave from mountain to mountain. But this day
something new had been joined to his affection. The air that met him
from the east had that in it which stirred some antique memory. There
was brine in it from the unruly eastern sea, and the sourness of marsh
water, and the sweetness of marsh herbage. As the forest thinned into
scrub again it came stronger and fresher, and he found himself sniffing
it like a hungry man at the approach of food. "If my manor of Highstead
is like this," he told himself, "I think I will lay my bones there."

At a turn of the road where two grassy tracks forked, he passed a graven
stone now chipped and moss-grown, set on noble eminence among reddening
thorns. It was an altar to the old gods of the land, there had been
another such in the forest of his childhood. The priest had told him
it was the shrine of the Lord Apollo and forbade him on the pain of a
mighty cursing to do reverence to it. Nevertheless he had been wont to
doff his cap when he passed it, for he respected a god that lived in
the woods instead of a clammy church. Now the sight of the ancient
thing seemed an omen. It linked up the past and the present. He waved
a greeting to it. "Hail, old friend," he said. "Bid your master be with
me, whoever he be, for I go to find a home."

One of his fellows rode up to his side. "We are within a mile of
Highstead," he told him. "Better go warily, for the King's law runs
limpingly in the fanlands. I counsel that a picket be sent forward to
report if the way be clear. Every churl that we passed on the road will
have sent news of our coming."

"So much the better," said Jehan. "Man, I come not as a thief in the
night. This is a daylight business. If I am to live my days here I must
make a fair conquest."

The man fell back sullenly, and there were anxious faces in the retin