“‘Damsel,’ she said, ’now I see that thy soul goes with thy body, and that thou art kind and proud at once.  And whatever thou art, it is no mock to say of thee, that thou art as fair as the fairest; and I think that this will follow thee, that henceforth no man who seeth thee once will forget thee ever, or cease to long for thee:  of a surety this is thy weird.  Now I see that thou knowest no more of the world and its ways than one of the hinds that run in these woods.  So if thou wilt, I will sit down by thee and tell thee much that shall avail thee; and thou in thy turn shalt tell me all the tale concerning thy dwelling and thy service, and the like.’

“I said, ’I may not, I durst not; I serve a mighty mistress, and she would slay me if she knew that I had spoken to thee; and woe’s me!  I fear that even now she will not fail to know it.  Depart in peace.’

“‘Nay,’ she said, ’thou needest not tell me, for I have an inkling of her and her ways:  but I will give thee wisdom, and not sell it thee at a price.  Sit down then, fair child, on this flowery grass, and I will sit beside thee and tell thee of many things worth thine heeding.’  So there we sat awhile, and in good sooth she told me much of the world which I had not yet seen, of its fairness and its foulness; of life and death, and desire and disappointment, and despair; so that when she had done, if I were wiser than erst, I was perchance little more joyous; and yet I said to myself that come what would I would be a part of all that.

“But at last she said:  ’Lo the day is waning, and thou hast two things to do; either to go home to thy mistress at once, or flee away from her by the way that I shall show thee; and if thou wilt be ruled by me, and canst bear thy thralldom yet a little while thou wilt not flee at once, but abide till thou hast seen me again.  And since it is here that thou hast met me, here mayst thou meet me again; for the days are long now, and thou mayst easily win thy way hither before noon on any day.’

“So I tied my goatskin shoes to my feet, and drave my goats together, and we went up together out of the dale, and were in the wide-spreading plain of the waste; and the carline said:  ‘Dost thou know the quarters of the heaven by the sun?’ ‘Yea,’ said I.  ‘Then,’ quoth she, ’whenso thou desirest to depart and come into the world of folk that I have told thee of, set thy face a little north of west, and thou shalt fall in with something or somebody before long; but be speedy on that day as thou art light-footed, and make all the way thou canst before thy mistress comes to know of thy departure; for not lightly will any one let loose such a thrall as thou.’

“I thanked her, and she went her ways over the waste, I wotted not whither, and I drave my goats home as speedily as I might; the mistress meddled not with me by word or deed, though I was short of my due tale of yarn.  The next day I longed sore to go to the dale and meet the carline but durst not, and the next day I fared in likeways; but the third day I longed so to go, that my feet must needs take me there, whatsoever might befall.  And when I had been in the dale a little, thither came the carline, and sat down by me and fell to teaching me wisdom, and showed me letters and told me what they were, and I learned like a little lad in the chorister’s school.