Said Osberne, knitting his brows: “I will not be healed in this way. For do I not know that she also is wrapped in sorrow and tormented by longing. Shall I leave her, therefore, as the dastard leaves a wounded friend before the oncoming foeman?”
Steelhead smiled on him. Quoth he: “Thou wilt not be healed? So be it; then mayst thou not abide in the Dale amongst the kindred, but carry thy trouble to the lands of the aliens, where there is none to remember the joyous face of thee before the trouble was.”
“This may I do,” said Osberne, “and even so it shall be since it is thy will. But hast nought else to say to enhearten me in my travel?”
“This I have thereto,” quoth Steelhead, “that though the world be wide there are many ways about it, and meseemeth that there is somewhere a way whereon
