Pelleas and Igraine came upon the occasional trail of the heathen as they went. A smoking villa, a burnt village with a dun mist hanging over it like a shroud, and once a naked man, bruised and bloody, bound to a tree, and shot through with arrows--such were the few sights that remembered to them their own need of caution. The wild country had been raided, and its sparse civilisation scattered to the woods. The crosses at the cross-roads had been thrown down and broken. A hermitage they came on in the woods had been sacked, and in it, to their pity, they found the body of a dead girl. They halted there to pray for her, and to give her burial. Pelleas dug a shallow grave under an oak, and they left her there, and went on their way with greater caution. Not a soul did they meet, yet Pelleas kept under cover as much as possible for prudence' sake. He scanned well every valley or piece of open land before crossing it, and kept under the wooelshawe whenever the track ran near trees. Fear of the unknown, and the dear burden that he bore, kept him alert as a goshawk for possible peril. By noon, despite sundry halts and reconnoitrings, they had covered nearly twenty miles, and by the evening of the same day they had added another score, for Pelleas's horse was a powerful beast, and Igraine's weight cumbered him little. Towards evening it began to rain, a heavy, summer, windless shower, that made moist rattle in the leaves, and flooded fragrant freshness into the air. Pelleas gave Igraine his cloak, and made her wear it, despite her excuses. As luck would have it, they came upon a little inn built in the grey shelter of a forsaken quarry. The inn folk were still there--an old woman, and a brat of a boy, her grandson. Seeing so great a knight, the beldam was ready enough to give them lodgings, and what welcome she could muster. She spread a supper of goat's milk, brown bread, and venison--not a bad table for such a hovel. The meal over, she pointed Pelleas with a leer to a little inner room that boasted a rough bed, a water-pot, and ewer. "We will not disturb ye," she said; "my lad has foddered the horse. You would be stirring early?" Pelleas gave the woman her orders, and sent Igraine into the inner room. He made himself a bed of dried bracken before her door, and laid himself there so that none could enter save over his body. The woman and the boy slept on straw in a corner. In this wise they passed the night. On the morrow, after more goat's milk and brown bread, with some wild strawberries to smooth it, they sallied early, and held on their way to Winchester. The shower of the night had given place to fair weather, and a fresh breeze blowing from the west. Soon the sun was up in such strength that the green woods lost their dankness, and the leaves their dew. It was the very morning for a ride.