All day they rode thus, and deeper and deeper they sank into a desolate land, where huge rocks jutted from the starved soil, and there was no sound or sight of living thing, except it was the wolf looking from his lair beneath a stone, or the breaking of a branch, as the brown bear on a distant hillslope tore at a tree to get a honeycomb, and blinked down at them, marvelling, maybe, to see a knight and a lady in his desolate domain. When, late in the afternoon, their long shadows marched before them down a broad green road which they had struck upon, Enid's heart suddenly lifted to see the white walls and roofs of what looked like a rich town; for she knew not what was in her lord's mind, and feared lest his strange anger should push him to go on through the night, and so become a prey to robbers or wild animals. But she marvelled that there was no sight or sound of people; no carters or travellers going to or coming from the city, and no smoke rose above the housetops. When they came nearer, she saw the wall of the gate was broken down, and that along the broad road beyond the wall the grass waved high across the street, and the little wooden booths and cabins beside the road were rotting and decayed. Anon they rode into a broad market-place or forum, where white buildings rose above them, the windows gaping, grass growing on the roofs or in the crannies of the walls, and the doorways choked with bushes. And out of the broad hallway of the basilica she saw the grey form of a wolf walk and slink away in the shadows. With a sinking heart she knew that this was one of the fair cities which the Romans had built, and when they had left Britain this town had been deserted and left desolate, to become a place where the wolf and the bear made their lairs, where the beaver built his dam in the stream beneath the wall of the palace, and where robbers and wild men lay hid, or the small people of the hills came and made their magic and weaved their spells, with the aid of the spirits haunting the desolate hearths of the Romans. And as Enid checked her horse and waited for Geraint to come up, that she might ask him whether it was his pleasure to pass the night there, she saw, down the wide street before her, the forms of men, creeping and gathering in the gloom. Then, fearing lest they should fall upon her husband before he was aware of them, she turned her horse and rode towards him and said: 'Lord, dost thou see the wild men which gather in the shadows there in the street before us, as if they would attack thee?' Geraint lifted up his angry eyes to hers: 'Thou wert bid to keep silent,' he said, 'whatsoever thou hast seen or heard. Why dost thou warn one whom thou dost despise?'