CHAPTER IX. THE BIGHT OF THE CLOVEN KNOLL.
AND now it was mid-April, and the goodman dight him to ride to a mote of the neighbours at a stead hight Bull-meads, where the Dalesmen were wont to gather in the spring, that they might ride thence all together to the town of East Cheaping and sell the autumn clip of wool and do other chaffer. So the carle goes his ways alone, and will be one night at Bull-meads and two at East Cheaping, and then another at Bull-meads, and be back on the fifth day. And when he was gone comes Stephen to Osberne, and says: Young master, I am going presently to the hill with the sheep, and thou needest neither to go with me nor fare a-hunting to-day, since the house is full of meat; so thou art free, and were I in thy shoes I would go straight from this door down to the water-side, and see if thou mayst not happen on something fair or seldom seen. And it were not amiss to do on thy coat of scarlet. But hearken to my rede, if thou comest on aught such, thou hast no need to tell of it to any one, not even to me.
Osberne thanks him, and takes his bow and arrows and goes his way, and comes to the river-side and turns his face south, and goes slowly along the very edge of the water; and the water itself drew his eyes down to gaze on the dark green deeps and fierce downlong swirl of the stream, with
