And he came and stood over the body and said:
"I have naught to do to hate him now: if he hated me,
it was but for a little while, and he knew naught of me.
So let his bones be covered up from the wolf and the kite.
Yet shall they not lie alongside of her. I will raise a cairn above
him here on this fair little plain which he spoilt of all joy."
Therewith he fell to, and straightened his body, and laid
his huge limbs together and closed his eyes and folded his
arms over his breast; and then he piled the stones above him,
and went on casting them on the heap a long while after there
was need thereof.

Ralph had taken his raiment from the stream-side and done them on before this,
and now he did on helm and hauberk, and girt his sword to his side.
Then as he was about leaving the sorrowful place, he looked on Silverfax,
who had not strayed from the little plain, and came up to him and did
off saddle and bridle, and laid them within the cave, and bade the beast
go whither he would. He yet lingered about the place, and looked all
around him and found naught to help him, and could frame in his mind no
intent of a deed then, nor any tale of a deed he should do thereafter.
Yet belike in his mind were two thoughts, and though neither softened his
grief save a little, he did not shrink from them as he did from all others;
and these two were of his home at Upmeads, which was so familiar to him,
and of the Well at the World's End, which was but a word.



CHAPTER 11

Ralph Cometh Out of the Wilderness