He kissed him twice and went his way without any more farewells than
the boy's snivelling. He never looked behind at Starning demesne,
where he had been born and bred and might have followed his father to
church, nor sideways at the broad oaks, nor over to the well-tilled
fields on either side his road; but rather pricked forward at a nimble
pace which tuned to the running of his blood. The blood of a lad sings
sharpest in the early morning; the air tingles, the light thrills, all
the great day is to come. This lad therefore rode with a song towards
the West, following his own shadow, down the deep Starning lanes,
through the woods and pastures of Parrox, over the grassy spaces of
the Downs, topping the larks in thought, and shining beam for beam
against the new-risen sun. The time of his going-out was September of
the harvest: a fresh wet air was abroad. He looked at the thin blue of
the sky, he saw dew and gossamer lie heavy on the hedge-rows. All his
heart laughed. Prosper was merry.
Whither he should go, what find, how fare, he knew not at all.
Morgraunt was before him, and of Morgraunt all the country spoke in a
whisper. It as far, it was deep, it was dark as night, haunted with
the waving of perpetual woods; it lay between the mountains and the
sea, a mystery as inviolate as either. In it outlaws, men desperate
and hungry, ran wild. It was a den of thieves as well as of wolves.
Men, young men too, had ridden in, high-hearted, proud of their
trappings, horses, curls, and what not; none had ever seen them come
out. They might be roaming there yet, grown old with roaming, and
gaunt with the everlasting struggle to kill before they were killed:
who could tell? Or they might have struck upon the vein of savage
life; they might go roaring and loving and robbing with the beasts--
why not? Morgraunt had swallowed them up; who could guess to what wild
uses she turned her thralls? That was a place, pardieu! Prosper, very
certain that at twenty-three it is a great thing to be hale and
astride a horse, felt also that to grow old without having given
Morgraunt a chance of killing you young would be an insipid
performance. "As soon be a priest!" he would cry, "or, by the Rood,
one of those flat-polled monks kept there by the Countess Isabel."
Morgraunt then for Prosper, and the West; beyond that--"One thing at a
time," thought he, for he was a wise youth in his way, and held to the
legend round his arms. Seeing that south of him he could now smell the
sea, and beyond him lay Morgraunt, he would look no further till
Morgraunt lay below him appeased or subjugate.