ea," said Ralph, "and what is this lord of Utterbol that all folk,
men and women, fear him so?" Said the merchant: "Fair sir, thou must
pardon me if I say no more of him. Belike thou mayst fall in with him;
and if thou dost, take heed that thou make not thyself great with him."

So Ralph thanked the merchant and departed with Clement, of whom
presently he asked if he knew aught of this lord of Utterbol. Said
Clement: "God forbid that I should ever meet him, save where I were
many and he few. I have never seen him; but he is deemed by all men as
the worst of the tyrants who vex these lands, and, maybe, the
mightiest."

So was Ralph sore at heart for the damsel, and anon he spake to Bull
again of her, who deemed somewhat, that his kinsman had been minded at
the first to sell her to the lord of Utterbol. And Ralph thinks his
game a hard one, yet deems that if he could but find out where the
damsel was, he might deliver her, what by sleight, what by boldness.

CHAPTER 25

The Fellowship Comes to Whiteness

Two days thereafter the chapmen having done with their matters in
Cheaping Knowe, whereas they must needs keep some of their wares for
other places, and especially for Goldburg, they dight them to be gone
and rode out a-gates of a mid-morning with banners displayed.

It was some fifty miles thence to Whiteness, which lay close underneath
the mountains, and was, as it were, the door of the passes whereby men
rode to Goldburg. The land which they passed through was fair, both of
tillage and pasture, with much cattle therein. Everywhere they saw men
and women working afield, but no houses of worthy yeomen or vavassors,
or cots of good husbandmen. Here and there was a castle or
strong-house, and here and there long rows of ugly hovels, or whiles
houses, big tall and long, but exceeding foul and ill-favoured, such as
Ralph had not yet seen the like of. And when he asked of Clement
concerning all this, he said: "It is as I have told thee, that here be
no freemen who work afield, nay, nor villeins either. All those whom
ye have seen working have been bought and sold like to those whom we
saw standing on the Stone in the market of Cheaping Knowe, or else were
born of such cattle, and each one of them can be bought and sold again,
and they work not save under the whip. And as for those hovels and the
long and foul houses, they are the stables wherein this kind of cattle
is harboured."

Then Ralph's heart