place for himself.

The next day he set off. He took with him one of his few possessions, a
little silver coin that a parson hard by had given him. He went his way
quickly among the pleasant fields, making towards the great bulk of
Blackdown beacon, where the hills 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