And in short, by the time the sun had set, I had talked with every one of them, so that I was one of their company at once, and we agreed to rise early and take our road to the place I am telling you about.

The sun “was to reste”: Skeat reads it as “gone to rest, set.” In a few evening hours the narrator has spoken to every one of twenty-nine strangers and been taken into the group, and the poem relies on that sociable, curious “I” for everything that follows. Forward is an agreement, the noun later used for the Host’s rules of the game. Skeat derives it from the Old English fore-weard, “lit. ‘fore ward,’ a precaution, agreement,” and quotes an old song: “Fals was here foreward so forst is in May,” their agreement was as false as a frost in May. “Ther as I yow devyse,” in Skeat’s note, is “to that place that I tell you of,” and he adds: Canterbury.