the church, wherein he found his good lord and
friend St. Nicholas, and so said a paternoster before his altar, and
besought his help, and made his offering; and then departed and gat to
horse again, and rode softly the way to the downs, for the day was hot.

The way was steep and winding, with a hollow cup of the hills below it,
and above it a bent so steep that Ralph could see but a few yards of it
on his left hand; but when he came to the hill's brow and could look
down on the said bent, he saw strange figures on the face thereof, done
by cutting away the turf so that the chalk might show clear. A tree
with leaves was done on that hill-side, and on either hand of it a
beast like a bear ramping up against the tree; and these signs were
very ancient. This hill-side carving could not be seen from the thorp
beneath, which was called Netherton, because the bent looked westward
down into the hollow of the hill abovesaid; but from nigher to Wulstead
they were clear to see, and Ralph had often beheld them, but never so
nigh: and that hill was called after them Bear Hill. At the top of it
was an earth-work of the ancient folk, which also was called Bear
Castle. And now Ralph rode over the hill's brow into it; for the walls
had been beaten down in places long and long ago.

Now he rode up the wall, and at the topmost of it turned and looked
aback on the blue country which he had ridden through stretching many a
league below, and tried if he could pick out Upmeads from amongst the
diverse wealth of the summer land: but Upmeads Water was hidden, and he
could see nothing to be sure of to tell him whereabouts the High House
stood; yet he deemed that he could make out the Debateable Wood and the
hills behind it well enough. Then he turned his horse about, and had
the down-country before him; long lines of hills to wit, one rising
behind the other like the waves of a somewhat quiet sea: no trees
thereon, nor houses that he might see thence: nought but a green road
that went waving up and down before him greener than the main face of
the slopes.

He looked at it all for a minute or two as the south-west wind went
past his ears, and played a strange tune on the innumerable stems of
the bents and the hard-stalked blossoms, to which the bees sang
counterpoint. Then the heart arose within him, and he drew the sword
from the scabbard, and waved it about his head, and shook it toward the
south, and cried out, "Now, welcome world, a