Quoth Ralph:  “Thou speakest as if there had been once histories and tales of this pleasant wilderness:  tell me, has it anything to do with that land about the wide river which we went through, Roger and I, as we rode to the Castle of Abundance the other day?  For he spoke of tales of deeds and mishaps concerning it.”  “Yea,” she said, “so it is, and the little stream that runs yonder beneath those cliffs, is making its way towards that big river aforesaid, which is called the Swelling Flood.  Now true it is also that there are many tales about of the wars and miseries that turned this land into a desert, and these may be true enough, and belike are true.  But these said tales have become blended with the story of those aforesaid wars of the Land of the Tower; of which indeed this desert is verily a part, but was desert still in the days when I was Queen of the Land; so thou mayst well think that they who hold me to be the cause of all this loneliness (and belike Roger thought it was so) have scarce got hold of the very sooth of the matter.”

“Even so I deemed,” said Ralph:  “and to-morrow we shall cross the big river, thou and I. Is there a ferry or a ford there whereas we shall come, or how shall we win over it?”

She was growing merrier again now, and laughed at this and said:  “O fair boy! the crossing will be to-morrow and not to-day; let to-morrow cross its own rivers; for surely to-day is fair enough, and fairer shall it be when thou hast been fed and art sitting by me in rest and peace till to-morrow morning.  So now hasten yet a little more; and we will keep the said little stream in sight as well as we may for the bushes.”

So they sped on, till Ralph said:  “Will thy feet never tire, beloved?” “O child,” she said, “thou hast heard my story, and mayst well deem that they have wrought many a harder day’s work than this day’s.  And moreover they shall soon rest; for look! yonder is our house for this even, and till to-morrow’s sun is high:  the house for me and thee and none else with us.”  And therewith she pointed to a place where the stream ran in a chain of pools and stickles, and a sheer cliff rose up some fifty paces beyond it, but betwixt the stream and the cliff was a smooth table of greensward, with three fair thorn bushes thereon, and it went down at each end to the level of the river’s lip by a green slope, but amidmost, the little green plain was some ten feet above the stream, and was broken by a little undercliff, which went down sheer into the water.  And Ralph saw in the face of the high cliff the mouth of a cave, however deep it might be.