Osberne looked Sir Godrick in the face, and ever the more he beheld him the better he liked the looks of his eyes and his visage. So now spake the Knight: "How sayest thou, young man? After all I have heard of thee I may well ask thee to be of mine. Only I must tell thee that the work may be both hard and rough; and though there may be somewhat to be won, yet on the other hand the pay may be little more than leave to do the work." Said Osberne: "So far as that goes, I am well willing to take my chance of it; but there is one thing which might stand in the way of service with thee." "What is that?" said Sir Godrick. Said Osberne: "It is in my mind that from henceforth for a while my days should pass in some land that is far hence, that is, from mine own place, and rather to the south than the north." "Where dwelleth thy kindred then?" said Godrick. "In the Dale, which is cleft by the Sundering Flood," said Osberne, "up under the great mountains; and I am of the East Dale, else scarce had I been here." "Well," said the Knight, "my chiefest house, which hight Longshaw, lieth a long way south of this; but I shall tell thee that it is no great way from the Sundering Flood; but betwixt it and the Flood is a great waste and forest. As to the Flood, it is there, where it runs through this forest which is called the Masterless Wood, a mighty great river, whereon are barges and cutters and seagoing dromonds even, so that it sunders nought, but joins rather. Now besides my house of Longshaw, which is as it were the knop and ouch of my manors, I have other houses and strongholds, some of which be in the very forest itself, and none of them more than a little way thence. For, sooth to say, the said forest is a shield and a refuge to me, and I had been overcome long ago save for its warding. I must tell thee further, that the southernmost skirts of the said forest come down within a score of miles of the great city by the sea which men call the City of the Sundering Flood; and that the city-folk love the forest little, save they might master it and make it their own, wherein they have failed hitherto, praise be to Allhallows! For then were I their very outlaw; whereas now there be others of the knighthood who dwell anigh me who deem that I have the right of it in warding my lands and theirs from these king-ruled chapmen. More by token that the day may come when the folk of their own town, as the gilds of the Lesser Crafts and the husbandmen and simple mariners, may rise against them, deeming them, as the truth is, hard masters and tyrants; wherefore, despite all their mastership, when I will and have occasion thereto, I may ride their streets in safety, for they wot that if they laid a hand on me or mine, it would be Bills and bows! bills and bows! up one street and down another. Wherefore they meddle not with me themselves, but set two or three of the barons who hold of them on the east side of the Wood Masterless to harry me from time to time.