Page:The Sundering Flood - Morris - 1898.djvu/253

 CHAPTER XLIV. THEY REACH LONGSHAW, AND OSBERNE GETS HIM A NEW NAME.

EREWITH must Osberne be content perforce, and in sooth his heart was the lighter that he had told his trouble to so good a friend as was Sir Godrick.

But the seven days over, they departed on their ways to the house of Longshaw, which well they knew; and they rode first for two days through rough land pretty much as it had been before Woodneb, and they saw all that way but three little houses of hunters or fowlers; and this, they told Osberne, right on from Woodneb was the beginning of the Wood Masterless. Thereafter they came amongst great timber-trees with wood awns betwixt, and but little underwood, and a goodly piece of the world that seemed unto Osberne. Three days it held so, and then came broken ground, whiles with much tangled thicket and whiles treeless, and this was a two days' ride; and many were the wild deer therein, so that their cheer was greatly amended. Thereafter was the wood thinner and more plain, and there was a clear road through it; and on the first day of their riding this way they came upon a sort of folk who were sitting on the greensward eating their dinner. They were fifteen all told, all of them with weapons, but Sir Godrick and his came upon them so suddenly that they had