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

breathed, that was soft and bore sweet scents home to him; whereas heretofore, and that



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especially for the last three or four days, it had been harsh and void, like the face of the desert
itself.


So on he went, and presently was mounting the ridge aforesaid, and, as oft happens when one
climbs a steep place, he kept his eyes on the ground, till he felt he was on the top of the ridge.
Then he stopped to take breath, and raised his head and looked, and lo! he was verily on the
brow of the great mountain-neck, and down below him was the hanging of the great hill-slopes,
which fell down, not slowly, as those he had been those days a-mounting, but speedily enough,
though with little of broken places or sheer cliffs. But beyond this last of the desert there was
before him a lovely land of wooded hills, green plains, and little valleys, stretching out far and
wide, till it ended at last in great blue mountains and white snowy peaks beyond them.


Then for very surprise of joy his spirit wavered, and he felt faint and dizzy, so that he was fain to
sit down a while and cover his face with his hands. Presently he came to his sober mind again,
and stood up and looked forth keenly, and saw no sign of any dwelling of man. But he said to
himself that that might well be because the good and well-grassed land was still so far off, and
that he might yet look to find men and their dwellings when he had left the mountain wilderness
quite behind him: So therewith he fell to going his ways down the mountain, and lost little time
therein, whereas he now had his livelihood to look to.




CHAPTER IX

WALTER HAPPENETH ON THE FIRST

OF THOSE THREE CREATURES

What with one thing, what with another, as his having to turn out of his way for sheer rocks, or
for slopes so steep that he might not try the peril of them, and again for bogs impassable, he was
fully three days more before he had quite come out of the stony waste, and by that time, though
he had never lacked water, his scanty victual was quite done, for all his careful husbandry



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thereof. But this troubled him little, whereas he looked to find wild fruits here and there and to
shoot some small deer, as hare or coney, and make a shift to cook the same, since he had with
him flint and fire-steel. Moreover the further he went, the surer he was that he should soon come
across a dwelling, so smooth and fair as everything looked before him. And he had scant fear,
save that he might happen on men who should enthrall him.