Therefore Osric soon had many secrets he could not confide to his grandfather, whom he was permitted to see from time to time,—a great concession on the part of the Lord of Wallingford, who craved all the boy's love for himself.
"Thou art changed, my dear Osric," said his grandfather on one of these occasions, a fine Sunday morn when Osric had leave of absence.
They were on their way through the tangled wood to the old Saxon Church of Aston Upthorpe, in which King Alfred was said to have heard Mass.[17]
"The woods were God's first temples, ere man raised
The architrave."
The very fountains babbled in His honour Who made them to laugh and sing, the birds sang their matin songs in His praise—this happy woodland was exempted from all those horrors of war which already devastated the rest of England, for it was safe under the protection of Brian, to whom, wiser than Wulfnoth of Compton, it paid tribute; and at this juncture Maude and her party were supreme, for it was during Stephen's captivity at Bristol.
"Thou art changed, my dear Osric."
"How, my grandsire?"
"Thy face is the same, yet not the same, even as Adam's face was the same, yet not the same, after he learned the secret of evil, which drove him from Paradise."