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But a name would come by marriage as well as by birth. All his terms with his penned Countess would have been, amnesty and the heiress. At first he prospered in everything he undertook. Waisford and Hauterive were under-garrisoned, and fell. Goltres, very remote, was unimportant except as a base.
"I can tell you no more," said the fellow, "than that his tower is in Hauterive. He hath guards along the river and a post at Waisford. We shall have trouble to cross the water. He is said to be for Wanmeeting; but I know he has High March in his eye, because the girl he wants is believed to be there. He has been here also, as you see, God damn him."
Five miles below Waisford they swam the river without any trouble from Galors' outposts: a wary canter over turf brought them to the flank of the hill; they climbed it, and from the top could see the Wan valley and what should be the town. It was a heap of stones, scorched and shapeless.
There are so many trackless regions in it, so many great lakes of green with never an island of a name, that to me, at least, it is salvation to have solid verifiable spots upon which to put a finger and say "Here is Waisford, here Tortsentier, here is the great river Wan, here by the grace of God and the Countess of Hauterive is Saint Giles of Holy Thorn." Of course to Isoult it was different.
In fact, he headed within a fortnight of his coming into North Morgraunt a force which was the largest known since Earl Roger of Bellesme had made a quietness like death over those parts. By the time of Prosper's exodus, that is by mid-May, his tactical situation was this it is as well to be precise. He had Hauterive and Waisford. Goltres was in the hollow of his hand.
Another night she fell in with some shaggy drovers leading cattle from March into Waisford, and shared the cloak and pillow of one of them without a quiver. Having dozed and started half-a-dozen times in a couple of hours, she got up without disturbing her bed-fellow and took to the woods again. So she came to her last day, when she looked to see the High March towers and what they held.
That night he slept by a roadside shrine, and next morning betimes took the lonely track again. Considering all this as he rode, he reached a sign-post which told him that here the ways of Wanmeeting and Waisford parted company. "Wanmeeting is my plain road," thought he, "but plainer still it is that of Galors and not of Galors alone. I think the longer going is like to be my shorter.
He must return for reinforcements, taking with him a report which, he relied, would secure them. Waisford had been raided, the fields about it laid waste. There were evidences of burnings and slaughterings on all hands. He put what heart he could into the scared burgesses before he left, and what common-sense. But Galors had gone through like a hot wind.
A few grimy colliers; some chair-turners amid their huts and white chips on the edge of a hidden hamlet; drovers with forest ponies going for Waisford or Market Basing; the hospitality and interminable devotions of a hermit by a mossy crucifix on Two Manors Waste; one night alone in a ruined chapel on the top of a down: of such were the encounters and events of his journey.
"I shall indeed," said Prosper. "Farewell, I am for my luck at Waisford." "I would come with you if I might," said the man slowly. "Come then. Two go better than one against five hundred." "Let me bury my pretty dead and I am yours, Messire." "Ah, I will help you there if I may," Prosper replied. They dug a shallow grave and laid in it the body of the young girl.
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