e
thou aside, wise man of Swevenham, and I shall tell thee wherefore."
"Yea," said Ralph, laughing, "and when he hath told thee, tell me not
again; for sure I am that he is right to go with us, and belike shall
be wrong in his reason therefore."

Roger looked a little askance at him, and he went without doors with
the Sage, and when they were out of earshot, he said to him: "Hearken,
I would have gone with my lord at the first word, and have been fain
thereof; but there is this woman that followeth him. At every turn she
shall mind me of our Lady that was; and I shall loath her, and her
fairness and the allurements of her body, because I see of her, that
she it is that hath gotten my Lady's luck, and that but for her my Lady
might yet have been alive."

Said the Sage: "Well quoth my lord that thou wouldst give me a fool's
reason! What! dost not thou know, thou that knowest so much of the
Lady of Abundance, that she it was who ordained this Ursula to be
Ralph's bedmate, when she herself should be gone from him, were she
dead or alive, and that she also should be a Friend of the Well, so
that he might not lack a fellow his life long? But this thou sayest,
not knowing the mind of our Lady, and how she loved him in her inmost
heart."

Roger hung his head and spake not for a while, and then he said: "Well,
wise man, I have said that I will go on this adventure, and I will
smooth my tongue for this while at least, and for what may come
hereafter, let it be. And now we were best get to horse; for what with
meat and minstrelsy, we have worn away the day till it wants but a
little of noon. Go tell thy lord that I am ready. Farewell peace, and
welcome war and grudging!"

So the Sage went within, and came out with the others, and they mounted
their horses anon, and Roger went ahead on foot, and led them through
the thicket-ways without fumbling; and they lay down that night on the
farther side of the Swelling Flood.

CHAPTER 18

A Change of Days in the Burg of the Four Friths

There is naught to tell of their ways till they came out of the thicket
into the fields about the Burg of the Four Friths; and even there was a
look of a bettering of men's lives; though forsooth the husbandmen
there were much the same as had abided in the fields aforetime, whereas
they were not for the most part freemen of the Burg, but aliens who did
service in war and otherwise thereto. But, it being eventide, there
were men and wo