swelled up into a steep bluff,
with a white road, cut in the chalk, winding steeply up their green
smooth sides. It was a fresh morning with a few white clouds racing
merrily overhead, the shadows of which fell every now and then upon
the down and ran swiftly over it, like a flood of shade leaping down
the sides. There were few people to be seen anywhere; the fields were
full of grass, with large daisies and high red sorrel. By midday he
was beneath the front of Blackdown, and here he asked at a cottage of
a good-natured woman, that was bustling in and out, the way to the
well. She answered him very kindly and described the path--it was not
many yards away--and then asked where he came from, saying briskly,
"And what would you wish for? I should have thought you had all you
could desire." "Why, I hardly know," said Paul, smiling. "It seems
that I desire a thousand things, and can scarcely give a name to one."
"That is ever the way," said the woman, "but the day will come when
you will be content with one." Paul did not understand what she meant,
but thanked her and went on his way; and wondered that she stood so
long looking after him.

At last he came to the spring. It was a pool in a field, ringed round
by alders. Paul thought he had never seen a fairer place. There grew a
number of great kingcups round the brim, with their flowers like
glistening gold, and with cool thick stalks and fresh leaves. Inside
the ring of flowers the pool looked strangely deep and black; but
looking into it you could see the sand leaping at the bottom in three
or four cones; and to the left the water bubbled away in a channel
covered with water-plants. Paul could see that there was an abundance
of little things at the bottom, half covered with sand--coins,
flowers, even little jars--which he knew to be the gifts of wishers.
So he flung his own coin in the pool, and saw it slide hither and
thither, glancing in the light, till it settled at the dark bottom.
Then he dipped and drank, turned to the sun, and closing his eyes,
said out loud, "Give me what I desire." And this he repeated three
times, to be sure that he was heard. Then he opened his eyes again,
and for a moment the place looked different, with a strange grey
light. But there was no answer to his prayer in heaven or earth, and
the very sky seemed to wear a quiet smile.

Paul waited a little, half expecting some answer; but presently he
turned his back upon the pool and walked slo