“Thus for that time dropped the talk of the Well at the World’s End, Lord Ralph, and of the way thither.  But I hung about the township yet a while, and yesterday as I stood on their stone bridge, and looked on the water, up comes that long lad with the yellow hair that the dame had pointed at, and says to me:  ’Master Richard, saving thine age and thy dignity and mastery, I can join an end to the tale which the carline began on Sunday night.’  ‘Yea, forsooth?’ said I, ‘and how, my lad?’ Said he:  ’Thou hast a goodly knife there in thy girdle, give it to me, and I will tell thee.’  ‘Yea,’ quoth I, ‘if thy tale be knife-worthy.’

“Well, the end of it was that he told me thus:  That by night and moon he came on one riding the highway, just about where the other woman had been seen, whose tale he had heard of.  He deemed at first this rider to be a man, or a lad rather for smallness and slenderness, but coming close up he found it was a woman, and saw on her neck a chaplet of gems, and deemed it no great feat to take it of her:  but he asked her of whence and whither, and she answered: 

“‘From unrest to the Well at the World’s End.’

“Then when he put out his hand to her, he saw a great anlace gleaming in her hand, wherefore he forbore her; and this was but five days ago.

“So I gave the lad my knife, and deemed there would be little else to hear in Swevenham for this bout; and at least I heard no more tales to tell till I came away this morning; so there is my poke turned inside out for thee.  But this word further would I say to thee, that I have seen on thy neck also a pair of beads exceeding goodly.  Tell me now whence came they.”

“From my gossip, dame Katherine,” said Ralph; “and it seems to me now, though at the time I heeded the gift little save for its kindness, that she thought something great might go with it; and there was a monk at Higham on the Way, who sorely longed to have it of me.”  “Well,” said Richard, “that may well come to pass, that it shall lead thee to the Well at the World’s End.  But as to the tales of Swevenham, what deemest thou of them?” Said Ralph:  “What are they, save a token that folk believe that there is such a thing on earth as the Well?  Yet I have made up my mind already that I would so do as if I trowed in it.  So I am no nearer to it than erst.  Now is there naught for it save to abide Master Clement’s coming; and when he hath brought me to Goldburg, then shall I see how the quest looks by the daylight of that same city.”  He spake so cheerfully that Richard looked at him askance, wondering what was toward with him, and if mayhappen anything lay underneath those words of his.