"Yea," said Christopher laughing, "that ye may go to sleep
before your time."

So they talked, and were joyous and blithe together, and
between them they made the house trim, and decked it with
boughs and blossoms; and though Christopher told them no
tale that night, Joanna and David sang both; and in a night
or two it was Christopher that was the minstrel. So when
the morrow came there began their life of the woodland; but,
save for the changing of the year and the chances of the
hunt, the time passed on from day to day with little change,
and it was but seldom that any man came their way. When Yule
was, they locked the house door behind them and went their
ways home to the Tofts; and now of all of these wayfarers
was Christopher by far the hardest and strongest, for his
side had utterly forgotten Simon's knife. At the Tofts they
were welcomed with all triumph, and they were about there in
the best of cheer, till it was wearing toward Candlemas, and
then they took occasion of a bright and sunny day to go back
to Littledale once more, and there they abode till spring
was come and was wearing into summer, and messages had come
and gone betwixt them and the Tofts, and it was agreed that
with the first of autumn they should go back to the Tofts
and see what should betide.

But now leave we Christopher and these good fellows of the
Tofts and turn to Goldilind, who is yet dwelling amid no
very happy days in the Castle of Greenharbour, on the
northernmost marches of Meadham.