"William Morris - The Wood Beyond the World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris William)

sinking of the wall. Walter looked long and earnestly at this place, and spake nought, till the
carle said: “What! thou hast found something before thee to look on. What is it then?”


Quoth Walter: “Some would say that where yonder slopes run together up towards that sinking
in the cliff-wall there will be a pass into the country beyond.”


The carle smiled and said: “Yea, son; nor, so saying, would they err; for that is the pass into the
Bear-country, whereby those huge men come down to chaffer with me.”


“Yea,” said Walter; and therewith he turned him a little, and scanned the rock-wall, and saw how
a few miles from that pass it turned somewhat sharply toward the sea, narrowing the plain much
there, till it made a bight, the face whereof looked wellnigh north, instead of west, as did the
more part of the wall. And in the midst of that northern-looking bight was a dark place which

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seemed to Walter like a downright shard in the cliff. For the face of the wall was of a bleak grey,
and it was but little furrowed.


So then Walter spake: “Lo, old friend, there yonder is again a place that meseemeth is a pass;
whereunto doth that one lead?” And he pointed to it: but the old man did not follow the pointing
of his finger, but, looking down on the ground, answered confusedly, and said:


“Maybe: I wot not. I deem that it also leadeth into the Bear-country by a roundabout road. It
leadeth into the far land.”


Walter answered nought: for a strange thought had come uppermost in his mind, that the carle
knew far more than he would say of that pass, and that he himself might be led thereby to find
the wondrous three. He caught his breath hardly, and his heart knocked against his ribs; but he
refrained from speaking for a long while; but at last he spake in a sharp hard voice, which he
scarce knew for his own: “Father, tell me, I adjure thee by God and All-hallows, was it through
yonder shard that the road lay, when thou must needs make thy first stride over a dead man?”


The old man spake not a while, then he raised his head, and looked Walter full in the eyes, and
said in a steady voice: “NO, IT WAS NOT.” Thereafter they sat looking at each other a while;
but at last Walter turned his eyes away, but knew not what they beheld nor where he was, but he
was as one in a swoon. For he knew full well that the carle had lied to him, and that he might as
well have said aye as no, and told him, that it verily was by that same shard that he had stridden
over a dead man. Nevertheless he made as little semblance thereof as he might, and presently
came to himself, and fell to talking of other matters, that had nought to do with the adventures of
the land. But after a while he spake suddenly, and said: “My master, I was thinking of a thing.”


“Yea, of what?” said the carle.