In the east shone the palest light. Huge lay the wold, and the sky was night save for that far illuming. Cool hung the air and still, still, still.
The wold began to colour. They ate of their loaf and took up their bundle and trudged again. April in the world. They were well together, with a great natural fitness. It did not matter if they talked or if they walked a long way in silence. One was to the other; they accorded. Once he said, “I have no knowledge how old we are. This wold is old, our earliest forefathers trod it, but we were there!”
“Aye! They and ourselves and all.”
All lonely was the wold and yet it was filled. The noon sun turned it gold. They felt a light warmth, a slight wind, a waving fragrance, a multitudinous fine sounding. They rested; they went on again.
A dog came limping toward them, yelping, in trouble. His paw was hurt, half crushed, apparently, by some rolling, falling mass. Just here lay hollow land, with the smallest stream gliding through. Englefield bathed the paw, set it right, and they tore cloth and bound it up. The dog’s wagging tail and his eyes said, “Friends! I am glad you came!” For a time he kept with them, but his home was over the wold, and with a final wag of the tail and lick of the hand, he left them. They watched him growing smaller and smaller till he disappeared behind a wavelet of earth.
The wold hereabouts was wavy, ridged. They followed the thread of water that had by it a faint path. Presently it ran beneath a high bank, a steep, escarped hill. An uprooted tree caught their eye, then a great heaped disorder of raw earth. “Look!” said Englefield. “The hillside has caved and fallen. It was that that caught the dog.”
The path was covered. They must cross the streamlet and go around the broken mass. They had almost cleared it when they saw over the thread of water a human figure, half buried, unconscious.
They worked until he was free. A leg was broken, forehead bleeding from a great cut. They dashed water upon him and he sighed and opened his eyes, a young man roughly dressed, with the seeming of fisherman or sailor. “The hill fell! I was thinking of gaffer and gammer that I was going to see and the hill fell!”
“Was there any one else?”