Story of the Glittering Plain Author:William Morris Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI. OF A DWELLING OF MAN ON THE ISLE OF RANSOM. WHEN he awoke again the sun shone on him, and the morning was calm and windless. He sat up and looked ... more »about him, but could see no signs of Fox save the lair wherein he had lain. So he arose to his feet and sought for him about the crannies of the rocks, and found him not; and he shouted for him, and had no answer. Then he said, " Belike he has gone down to the boat to put a thing in, or take a thing out." So he went his ways to the stair down into the water-cave, and he called on Fox from the top of the stair, and had no answer. So he went down that long stair with a misgiving in his heart, and when he came to the last step there was neither man nor boat, nor aught else save the water and the living rock. Then was he exceeding wroth, for he knew that he had been beguiled, and he was in an evil case, left alone on an Isle that he knew not, a wasteand desolate land, where it seemed most like he should die of famine. He wasted no breath or might now in crying out for Fox, or seeking him; for he said to himself: "I might well have known that he was false and a liar, whereas he could scarce refrain his joy at my folly and his guile. Now is it for me to strive for life against death. Then he turned and went slowly up the stair, and came out on to the open face of that Isle, and he saw that it was waste indeed, and dreadful; a wilderness of black sand and stones and ice- borne rocks, with here and there a little grass growing in the hollows, and here and there a dreary mire where the white-tufted rushes shook in the wind, and here and there stretches of moss blended with red-blossomed sengreen; and otherwhere nought but the wind-bitten creeping willow clinging to the black sand, with a white bleached stick and a leaf or two...« less