But Elfric tried to bear up, and the end came.

The little cavalcade left the castle, two attendants, well armed and
mounted, being his bodyguard.

Again and again he looked back; and when, after a journey of two miles,
the envious woods closed in, and hid the dear familiar home from his
sight, a strange sense of desolation rushed upon him, as if he were
alone in the world.

The route taken by the cavalcade led them in the first place to Warwick,
even then a flourishing Saxon town: this was the limit of Elfric's
previous wanderings, and when they left it for the south, the whole
country was strange to him.

The royal messenger had business at the cathedral city of Dorchester, at
the junction of the Tame and Isis, and they did not take the more direct
route by the Watling Street, the most perfect Roman road remaining. The
land was but thinly peopled, forests covered the greater portion, and
desolate marshes much of the remainder; thus, through alternate forest
and marsh, the travellers advanced along the ruinous remains of an old
Roman crossroad, which had once afforded good accommodation to
travellers, but had been suffered to fall into utter ruin and decay by
the neglect of their successors, our own barbarous ancestors.

Originally it had been paved with stone, and causeways had been formed
over marsh and mere, but the stones had been taken away, for the road
formed the most accessible quarry in the neighbourhood. Here and there,
however, it was still good, surviving the wear of centuries, and even
the old mileposts of iron were still existing covered with rust, with