When he was dressed and ready, he descended quietly to his father's room, and opened the door with a gentle hand, for Mr. Woodhall was never a very early riser, and Ralph fancied that he might be still asleep. He found him, however, lying reading in his bed, and, after taking a brief parting, not without its tenderness and depth of feeling, however few the words might be, the young man retired. When he was near the door, however, old Mr. Woodhall exclaimed, "Ralph! Ralph!" and added, when his son turned toward him, "you have not forgotten your Cicero, I hope; you said you would put him in your saddle-bags; he is a good companion, Ralph." His son assured him that Cicero had not been forgotten, and then departed.
The next parting was a silent one, but not less full of emotion. There was a little rise in the ground upon the road which he traveled, whence the whole of one side of the mansion of Woodhall was visible to the wanderer's eye. The house was indeed so near that small ornaments of stone-work could be easily distinguished across the stream, and at one of the windows, which, by one means or another, he had learned to know better than any of the rest, there was a fair face gazing out upon the road. Ralph paused for an instant, and waved his hand; a hand was waved in return, and then Margaret retreated hastily from the open window, and he thought he could see her kneel down at the foot of the bed, as if to pray or weep.
"I will win her or die," said Ralph to himself, and that last interview armed him, perhaps, more than all else, to struggle with the difficulties before him. There is nothing in the world so invigorating to the wrestler, man, in his combat with the world, as a strong passion and a strong resolution.
From that spot he rode on rapidly, gaining the high country by degrees, sometimes sweeping over a bare hill side, sometimes passing along under a bank from which stretched forth a canopy of trees. At the distance of about four miles there was a small hamlet, from which the inhabitants of the cottages had principally gone forth to their early labors in the field; but one old woman, withered and blear, with such a face as would easily have made a witch in any land not more than fifty years before, was sitting spinning at one of the doors. As the young traveler came up she raised her eyes, and said aloud, "Ay, those ride fast who ride to ill."