"There is no land like England," he said, "there are no such meadows
elsewhere, no such hedgerows, no such birds, and no such soft fleeced
white clouds in the blue sky." In truth, it seemed so to him, as it
seems always to an Englishman returning from foreign lands. The
thatched cottages spoke of homely comfort, the sound of the village
church bells was like a prayer, the rustics, as they looked up from
work in the fields to pull their forelocks as he rode by them, seemed
to wear kindlier looks upon their sunburnt faces than he had seen in
other countries.
"But," he said to himself, and smiled in saying it, "it is because I am
a happy man, and am living like one who dreams. Men have ridden before
on such errands. Hugh de Mertoun rode so four hundred years gone, to a
grey castle in the far north of Scotland, to make his suit to a fair
maiden whose beauties he had but heard rumour of and whose face he had
never seen. He rode through a savage country, and fought his way to her
against axe and spear. But when he reached her she served him in her
father's banquet hall, and in years after used to kiss the scars left
by his wounds, and sing at her harp the song of his journey to woo her.
But he had not known her since the time of her birth, and been haunted
by her until her womanhood."
To Dunstan's Wolde in Warwickshire he rode, where he was to be a guest,
and sometimes he reproached himself that he was by natural habit of
such reserve that in all their converse together he had never felt that
he could speak his thoughts to his kinsman on the one subject they had
dwelt most upon.
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