He rode on, going with the same deliberateness as before. The road bending, the mill was hidden. He was going over a way chequered with light and shade. Overhead rose a great noise of birds. The road mounting slightly; he saw, at a little distance, the village full before him like the device upon a shield. Richard Osmund upon his white horse.
The horse had been his father’s. It was old, but strong yet. Richard Osmund had money, just enough to loosen the bonds of farm and of desk and to set him free to go through England from town to town and village to village, to clothe him as he was clothed, to give him plain lodging and plain food. He had not money for another horse, did he wish to change. Loving his old white friend, the thing had not before occurred to him. But it was true that he was sooner known for the horse that he rode. Where there grew hostility the bitter fruit fell oftener upon his head.... He might take White Faithful back to the farm, and henceforth walk. That was in his mind as he rode.... Halfway between the mill and the town he saw running through the fields the boys who had hung about the mill door. They were making for Great Meadow, and would be there as soon or sooner than he. “Ho! Coming into town, Richard Osmund—!”
White Faithful and Osmund plodded on.
He thought that he must have been in Great Meadow as a child, his father and mother coming this way from the north. And after Marston Moor he had ridden through the place, a young soldier in a troop of Ironsides. He had remembered the mill, and now he thought that over all the landscape and the village like the boss of the shield there hung a sense of familiarity. He often had this brooding sense. “Nor is this either strange to me!”
He approached the edge of the village. About him, among trees, stood some poor cottages. He spoke to an old man leaning upon a gate. “I want a lodging for two days or more. There is a tavern here—”
“Aye. Once ’twas the King’s Own, but now ’tis the Green Wreath.”
“Tavern charges are too great. But I can pay fairly for myself and my horse.”
“Over there, among the willows—Diccon the thatcher may take you.”
“Over there” showed a field away from the road. A lane led to it. Down this turned Osmund, riding beneath ancient trees. He crossed a stream, and came to a thatched house, long and low, willow-shaded, and open-doored. Diccon the thatcher was building a shed. Yes, he had a room to hire and a stable for a horse. So much it was.
Osmund, dismounted, drew from pocket the sum named.