had we journeyed on, that when at last I lifted my eyes with a great
sigh that was almost a sob, I found myself in a place utterly unknown
to me.

But more inexplicable yet, not only was the place strange, but, by
some incredible wizardry, Rosinante seemed to have carried me out of a
March morning, blue and tumultuous and bleak, into the grey, sweet
mist of a midsummer dawn.

I found that we were ambling languidly on across a green and level
moor. Far away, whether of clouds or hills I could not yet tell, rose
cold towers and pinnacles into the last darkness of night. Above us in
the twilight invisible larks climbed among the daybeams, singing as
they flew. A thick dew lay in beads on stick and stalk. We were alone
with the fresh wind of morning and the clear pillars of the East.

On I went, heedless, curious, marvelling; my only desire to press
forward to the goal whereto destiny was directing me. I suppose after
this we had journeyed about an hour, and the risen sun was on the
extreme verge of the gilded horizon, when I espied betwixt me and the
deep woods that lay in the distance a little child walking.

She, at any rate, was not a stranger to this moorland. Indeed,
something in her carriage, in the grey cloak she wore, in her light,
insistent step, in the old lantern she carried, in the shrill little
song she or the wind seemed singing, for a moment half impelled me to
turn aside. Even Rosinante pricked forward her ears, and stooped her
gentle face to view more closely this light traveller. And she pawed
the ground with her great shoe, and gnawed her bit when I drew rein
and leaned forward in the saddle to speak to the child.