'
Therewith he drank of the cup which the Bride put into his hand after
she had kissed the rim, but when he had set it down again he spake
once more:
'And yet now I am sitting honoured and well-beloved in the House of
my Fathers, with the holy hearth sparkling and gleaming down there
before me; and she that shall bear my children sitting soft and kind
by my side, and the bold lads I shall one day lead in battle drinking
out of my very cup: now it seems to me that amidst all this, the
dark cold wood, wherein abide but the beasts and the Foes of the
Gods, is bidding me to it and drawing me thither. Narrow is the Dale
and the World is wide; I would it were dawn and daylight, that I
might be afoot again.'
And he half rose up from his place. But his father bent his brow on
him and said: 'Kinsman, thou hast a long tongue for a half-trained
whelp: nor see I whitherward thy mind is wandering, but if it be on
the road of a lad's desire to go further and fare worse. Hearken
then, I will offer thee somewhat! Soon shall the West-country
merchants be here with their winter truck. How sayest thou? hast
thou a mind to fare back with them, and look on the Plain and its
Cities, and take and give with the strangers? To whom indeed thou
shalt be nothing save a purse with a few lumps of gold in it, or
maybe a spear in the stranger's band on the stricken field, or a bow
on the wall of an alien city.
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