And Athelwold was
the man he greatly loved--the companion of all his years since their
boyhood together. Had he betrayed him in this monstrous way--wounding
him in his tenderest part? The very thought that such a thing might be
was like a madness in him. Then he reflected--then he remembered, and
said to himself: Yes, let me follow his teaching in this matter too, as
in the other, and exercise caution and look before I leap. I shall look
and look well and see and judge for myself.
The result was that when his boon companions next met him there was no
shadow of displeasure in him; he was in a peculiarly genial mood, and so
continued. And when his friend returned he embraced him and gently
upbraided him for having kept away for so long a time. He begged him to
remember that he was his one friend and confidant who was more than a
brother to him, and that if wholly deprived of his company he would
regard himself as the loneliest man in the kingdom. Then in a short time
he spoke once more in the same strain, and said he had not yet
sufficiently honoured his friend before the world, and that he proposed
visiting him at his own castle to make the acquaintance of his wife and
spend a day with him hunting the boar in Harewood Forest.
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