the turrets, and wind
crooned in the chimneys of the house. Nine years she came not abroad,
nor tasted the clean air, neither saw God's sky. Nine years she sat and
looked neither to the right nor to the left, nor heard speech of any
one, but thought upon the thought of the morrow. And her nurse fed her
in silence, and she took of the food with her left hand, and ate it
without grace.

Now when the nine years were out, it fell dusk in the autumn, and there
came a sound in the wind like a sound of piping. At that the nurse
lifted up her finger in the vaulted house.

"I hear a sound in the wind," said she, "that is like the sound of
piping."

"It is but a little sound," said the King's daughter, "but yet it is
sound enough for me."

So they went down in the dusk to the doors of the house, and along the
beach of the sea. And the waves beat upon the one hand, and upon the
other the dead leaves ran; and the clouds raced in the sky, and the
gulls flew widdershins. And when they came to that part of the beach
where strange things had been done in the ancient ages, lo! there was
the crone, and she was dancing widdershins.

"What makes you dance widdershins, old crone?" said the King's daughter;
"here upon the bleak beach, between the waves and the dead leaves?"

"I hear a sound in the wind that is like a sound of piping," quoth she.
"And it is for that that I dance widdershins. For the gift comes that
will make you bare, and the man comes that must bring you care. But for
me the morrow is come that I have thought upon, and the hour of my
power."

"How comes it, crone," said the King's daughter, "that you waver like a
rag, and pale like a dead leaf before my eyes?"

"Because the morrow has come that I have thought upon, and the hour of
my power," said the crone; and she fell on the beach, and, lo! she was
but stalks of the sea tangle, and dust of the sea sand, and the
sand-lice hopped upon the place of her.

"This is the strangest thing that befell between two seas," said the
King's daughter of Duntrine.

But the nurse broke out and moaned like an autumn gale. "I am weary of
the wind," quoth she; and she bewailed her day.

The King's daughter was aware of a man upon the beach; he went hooded so
that none might perceive his face, and a pipe was underneath his arm.
The sound of his pipe was like singing wasps, and like the wind that
sings in windlestraw; and it took hold upon men's ears like the crying
of gulls.