And therewith the distressfulness of her face which had worn Ralph’s heart while she had been telling her tale changed, and she came, as it were, into her new life and the love of him again, and she kissed him and laid her cheek to his and he kissed her mouth.  And then she fetched a sigh, and began with her story again.

“My mistress took the necklace and put it in her pouch, and said as to herself:  ’Here, then, is another seeker who hath not found, unless one should dig a pit for her here when the thaw comes, and call it the Well at the World’s End:  belike it will be for her as helpful as the real one.’  Then she turned to me and said:  ’Do thou with the rest what thou wilt,’ and therewith she went back hastily to the house.  But as for me, I went back also, and found a pick and a mattock in the goat-house, and came back in the moonlight and scraped the snow away, and dug a pit, and buried the poor damsel there with all her gear.

“Wore the winter thence with naught that I need tell of, only I thought much of the words that my mistress had spoken.  Spring came and went, and summer also, well nigh tidingless.  But one day as I drave the goats from our house there came from the wood four men, a-horseback and weaponed, but so covered with their armour that I might see little of their faces.  They rode past me to our house, and spake not to me, though they looked hard at me; but as they went past I heard one say:  ‘If she might but be our guide to the Well at the World’s End!’ I durst not tarry to speak with them, but as I looked over my shoulder I saw them talking to my mistress in the door; but meseemed she was clad but in poor homespun cloth instead of her rich apparel, and I am far-sighted and clear-sighted.  After this the autumn and winter that followed it passed away tidingless.

CHAPTER 4

The Lady Tells of Her Deliverance

“Now I had outgrown my old fear, and not much befell to quicken it:  and ever I was as much out of the house as I could be.  But about this time my mistress, from being kinder to me than before, began to grow harder, and ofttimes used me cruelly:  but of her deeds to me, my friend, thou shalt ask me no more than I tell thee.  On a day of May-tide I fared abroad with my goats, and went far with them, further from the house than I had been as yet.  The day was the fairest of the year, and I rejoiced in it, and felt as if some exceeding great good were about to befall me; and the burden of fears seemed to have fallen from me.  So I went till I came to a little flowery dell, beset with blossoming whitethorns and with a fair stream running through it; a place somewhat like to this, save that the stream there was bigger.  And the sun was hot about noontide, so I did off my raiment, which was rough and poor, and more meet for winter than May-tide, and I entered a pool of the clear water, and bathed me and sported therein, smelling the sweet scent of the whitethorns