By then he was come to the place where the Maiden Ward was held in
the summer the dawn was so far forward that all things had their due
colours, and were clear to see in the shadowless day. It was a
bright morning, with an easterly air stirring that drave away the
haze and dried the meadows, which had otherwise been rimy; for it was
cold. Gold-mane lingered on the place a little, and his eyes fell on
the road, as dusty yet as in Redesman's song; for the autumn had been
very dry, and the strip of green that edged the outside of the way
was worn and dusty also. On the edge of it, half in the dusty road,
half on the worn grass, was a long twine of briony red-berried and
black-leaved; and right in the midst of the road were two twigs of
great-leaved sturdy pollard oak, as though they had been thrown aside
there yesterday by women or children a-sporting; and the deep white
dust yet held the marks of feet, some bare, some shod, crossing each
other here and there. Face-of-god smiled as he passed on, as a man
with a happy thought; for his mind showed him a picture of the Bride
as she would be leading the Maiden Ward next summer, and singing
first among the singers, and he saw her as clearly as he had often
seen her verily, and before him was the fashion of her hands and all
her body, and the little mark on her right wrist, and the place where
her arm whitened, because the sleeve guarded it against the sun,
which had long been pleasant unto him, and the little hollow in her
chin, and the lock of red-brown hair waving in the wind above her
brow, and shining in the sun as brightly as the Alderman's cunningest
work of golden wire.
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