And now, as they rode through sunlight and shadow, Beltane felt his black mood slowly lifted from him and knew a sense of rest, a content unfelt this many a day; he looked, glad-eyed, upon the beauty of the world about him, from green earth to an azure heaven peeping through a fretted screen of branches; he marked the graceful, slender bracken stirring to the soft-breathing air, the mighty boles of stately trees that reached out sinuous boughs one to another, to touch and twine together amid a mystery of murmuring leaves. All this he saw, yet heeded not at all the round-mailed arms that clasped him in their soft embrace, nor the slender hands that held upon his girdle.
So rode they through bosky dell and dingle, until the sun, having climbed the meridian, sank slowly westwards; and Sir Fidelis spake soft-voiced:
"Think you we are safe at last, my lord?"
"Fidelis," saith Beltane, "Yest're'en did'st thou name me selfish, to-day, a babe, and, moreover, by thy disobedience hast made my schemes of no avail—thus am I wroth with thee."
"Yet doth the sun shine, my lord," said Sir Fidelis, small of voice.
"Ha—think you my anger so light a thing, forsooth?"
"Messire, I think of it not at all."
"By thy evil conduct are we fugitives in the wilderness!"
"Yet is it a wondrous fair place, messire, and we unharmed—which is well, and we are—together, which is—also well."
"And with but one beast to bear us twain!"