The well at the world's end Pocket ed Author:William Morris Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: countenance, and upheld it the whole evening through, and was by seeming merry at supper, and went to bed singing. CHAPTER III RALPH COMETH TO THE CHEAPING... more »-TOWN He slept in an upper chamber in a turret of the House, which chamber was his own, and none might meddle with it. There the next day he awoke in the dawning, and arose and clad himself, and took his war-gear and his sword and spear, and so bore all away without doors to the side of the Ford in that ingle of the river, and laid it for a while in a little willow-copse, so that no chance-comer might see it; then he went back to the stable of the House and took his destrier from the stall (it was a dapple-grey horse called Falcon, and was right good,) and brought him down to the said willow-copse, and tied him to a tree till he had armed himself amongst the willows, whence he came forth presently as brisk-looking and likely a man-at-arms as you might see on a summer day. Then he clomb up into the saddle, and went his ways splashing across the ford, before the sun had arisen, while the throstle-cocks were yet amidst their first song. Thence he rode a little trot south-away; and by then the sun was up he was without the bounds of Upmeads ; albeit in the land thereabout dwelt none who were not friends to King Peter and his sons : and that was well, for now were folk stirring and were abroad in the fields ; as a band of carles going with their scythes to the hay-field ; or a maiden with her milking-pails going to her kine, barefoot through the seeding grass ; or a company of noisy little lads on their way to the nearest pool of the stream that theymight bathe in the warm morning after the warm night. All these and more knew him and his armour and Falcon his horse, and gave him the sele of the day, and he was nowise trou...« less