As the winter wore on, he grew restless in his solitude, restless and sullen as the waters of the little stream in their prison of ice. He told himself that when the spring came he would feel more settled; but when on one of his morning rides he came upon the first crocus, lifting its golden cup toward the sun, it only gave to his pointless restlessness a poisoned barb. Involuntarily his first thought was, “It would look like a spark of fire in the dusk of her hair.” When he realized what he had said, he planted the great fore-foot of his horse squarely on the innocent thing and crushed it back into the earth; but it had done its work, for after that he knew that neither the promise of the springtime nor the fullness of the harvest would bring him any pleasure, since his eyes must see them alone. “The next time they sing the ‘Romance of King Offa,’ before me, I will not hold back my sympathy,” he scorned himself, “for at last I understand how it is possible for an elf to lure a man’s reason off its seat and leave him a dreaming dolt.” Like a new lease of life it came to him when the last of the April days brought the long-delayed summons to the King. The old cniht, who considered that a command to military service could be justified only by imminent national destruction, was deeply incensed when he learned that the call was to no more than an officership in the new body of Royal Guards, but the young lord checked him with even a touch of impatience. “What a throng of many words, my friend Morcard, have you spoken! Did you learn naught from the palisade that gave way because churls paid me their service when and how they would?” he demanded. “Now let me inform you that I have got that lesson by heart, and hereafter no king shall have that trouble about me. At sunrise, I ride back with the messenger.” And he maintained this view so firmly that his face was rather stern as he spent the night settling matters of ploughing and planting and pasturage with the indignant old servitor. But the next morning, after he had set forth and found how every mile lengthening behind him lightened the burden of his depression, a kind of joy rose phoenix-like out of the gray ashes of duty. “If I had continued there, I should have become feeble in mind,” he said. “Now, since I have got out of that tomb that she haunts, it may be that I can follow my art more lustily.” And suddenly his sternness melted into a great warmth, toward the strapping soldier riding beside him, toward the pannier-laden venders swinging along in their tireless dog-trot, even toward the beggar that hobbled out of the ditch to waylay him. “To live out in the world, where you are pulled into others’ lives whether you will or no, is the best thing to teach people to forget,” he said. “Solitude has comfort only for those who have no sorrows, for Solitude is the mother of remembrance.”