e
thee, and I shall send him back to Wethermel ere many days are past.
Farewell, my son!"

So he kissed the youngling, and rode away south across the stream and
over the other side of the clough. Osberne stood beside his horse,
looking after him and the way he had taken, and then mounted and rode
his way homeward, somewhat downcast at first for the missing of this
new father. But after a while, what for his new gift and his
freshly-gained might, and the pride and pleasure of life, he became
all joyous again, as though the earth were new made for him.

Ye may well think that the very next time (which indeed was on the
morrow) that Osberne went to the Bight of the Cloven Knoll, he went
girt with Boardcleaver, and showed it to his friend; and she looked
somewhat sober at the sight of it, and said: "I pray thee, Osberne,
draw it not forth from the sheath." "In nowise may I draw it," said
he, "for I am told never to draw it till I have my foe before me; for
ever it will have a life betwixt the coming forth from the sheath and
its going back again." "I fear me," she said, "that thou wilt have to
draw it often, so that many a tale will be told of it, and perhaps at
last the death of thee." And therewith she put her hands up to her
face and wept. But he comforted her with kind words, till the tears
were gone.

Then she looked at him long and lovingly, and said at last: "I know
not how it is, but thou seemest to me changed and grown less like a
child, as though some new might had come to thee. Now I may not ask
thee who has done this to thee, and given thee the sword, for if thou
mightest thou wouldst have told me. But tell me this, hast thou all
this from a friend or a foe?" He said: "Dost thou indeed see that I
may not tell thee who is the giver; but I may tell thee that it is a
friend. But art thou not glad of my gain?" She smiled and said: "I
should be glad, and would be if I might; but somehow meseemeth that
thou growest older quicker than I do, and that it is ill for me, for
it will sunder us more than even now we be sundered."

And again he had to comfort her with sweet words; and he shot across
to her an ouch which Stephen had given him that morning, so soon she
was herself again, and sat and told him a tale of old times; and they
parted happily, and Osberne gat him home to Wethermel. But he had
scarce been at home a minute or two when there came one riding to the
door, a young man scarlet-clad and gay, and his hors