is business, and he said he was for London to see
the King.

The priest asked him whether he would speak with the King, and he told
him Yes if our Lord willed.

"And what have you to say to him?" asked the priest.

"I do not know," said Master Richard.

The priest looked at him, and said something about a pair of fools, but
Master Richard did not understand him then, for he had not heard yet the
tale that the King was mad or near it.

So he kissed the priest's skirt, and asked his blessing; then he went
down the steps to the little holy well (which makes me think it to be
saint Pancras's church) and drank a little water after signing himself
with it and commending himself to the saint, and went on his way. The
sun was now high and hot, but he told me that when he looked back at the
turn of the path the priest was at the gate in the full sun staring
after him.

Of his journey that day there is not much to relate. He went by
unfrequented ways, walking sedately as his manner was, with devotion in
his heart. An hour before noon a woman gave him dinner as she came back
from taking it to her husband who burned charcoal in the forest, and
asked him a kiss for payment when he had done his meal, sitting on a
tree, with her standing by and looking upon him all the while. But he
told her that he was a solitary, and that he had kissed no woman but his
mother, who had died ten years before, so she appeared content, though
she still looked upon him. Then as he stood up, thanking her for the
dinner, she caught his hand and kissed that, and he reproved her gently
and went on his way again.

For many miles after that it was the same; he saw no man, but only the
beasts now and then, walking beneath the high branches in the sylvan
twilight, over the dead leaves and the fern, and seeing now and again,
as he expressly told me, for it seemed he had some lesson from it, the
hot light that danced in the open spaces to right and left.

He saw one strange sight, which I should not have believed if he had
not told me, and that was a ring of bulls in a clearing that tossed
something this way and that, one to the other: he drove them off, and
found that it was a hare, not yet dead, but it died in his hands. He
told me that this verse came to his mind as he laid the poor beast down
under a tree; _Circumdederunt me vituli multi: tauri pingues obsederunt
me_, ["Many calves have surrounded me: fat bulls have besieged me"
(Ps. xxi. 13)] and th