Page:Aucassin and Nicolette (Bourdillon).pdf/56

Rh Wounded have my heart to death. So God, the strong Father will, I shall look upon you still, Sister, sweet friend!"

Here they speak and tell the story.

went through the forest this way and that way, and his good steed carried him a great pace. Think not that the briars and thorns spared him! Not a whit! Nay they tore his clothes so, that 'twere hard work to have patched them together again; and the blood flowed from his arms and his sides and his legs in forty places or thirty; so that one could have followed the boy by the trace of the blood that fell upon the grass. But he thought so much on Nicolette, his sweet friend, that he felt neither hurt nor pain. All day long he rode through the forest, but so it was that he never heard news of her. And, when he saw that evening drew on, he began to weep because he found her not.

He was riding down an old grassy road, when he looked before him in the way and saw a boy,