the first glimmer of dawn, and mounted and rode forth
onward, that they might the sooner be out of that deadly desert, for
fear clung to their hearts.

This day, forsooth, they found so many dead folk, that they might not
stay to bury them, lest they themselves should come to lie there
lacking burial. So they made all the way they might, and rode on some
hours by starlight after the night was come, for it was clear and cold.
So that at last they were so utterly wearied that they lay down amongst
those dead folk, and slept soundly.

On the morrow morn Ralph awoke and saw Ursula sleeping peacefully as he
deemed, and he looked about on the dreary desert and its dead men and
saw no end to it, though they lay on the top of one of those stony
bents; and he said softly to himself: "Will it end at all then?
Surely all this people of the days gone by were Seekers of the Well as
we be; and have they belike turned back from somewhere further on, and
might not escape the desert despite of all? Shall we turn now: shall
we turn? surely we might get into the kindly wood from here."

So he spake; but Ursula sat up (for she was not asleep) and said: "The
perils of the waste being abundant and exceeding hard to face, would
not the Sage or his books have told us of the most deadly?" Said Ralph:
"Yet here are all these dead, and we were not told of them,
nevertheless we have seen the token on the rocks oft-times yesterday,
so we are yet in the road, unless all this hath been but a snare and a
betrayal."

She shook her head, and was silent a little; then she said: "Ralph, my
lad, didst thou see this token (and she set hand to the beads about her
neck) on any of those dead folk yesterday?" "Nay," said Ralph, "though
sooth to say I looked for it." "And I in likewise," she said; "for
indeed I had misgivings as the day grew old; but now I say, let us on
in the faith of that token and the kindness of the Sage, and the love
of the Innocent People; yea, and thy luck, O lad of the green fields
far away, that hath brought thee unscathed so far from Upmeads."

So they mounted and rode forth, and saw more and more of the dead folk;
and ever and anon they looked to them to note if they wore the beads
like to them but saw none so dight. Then Ursula said: "Yea, why should
the Sage and the books have told us aught of these dead bodies, that
are but as the plenishing of the waste; like to the flowers that are
cast down before the bier of a saint o