ing for two days through a great forest, without
food or drink, and without coming across a single house, and every
night they had to climb up into the trees through fear of the wild
beasts that were in the wood. On the second morning the Scotsman saw
from the top of his tree a great castle far away. He said to himself
that he would certainly die if he stayed in the forest without
anything to eat but the roots of grass, which would not keep him alive
very long. As soon, then, as he got down out of the tree he set off
towards the castle, without so much as telling his companions that he
had seen it at all; perhaps the hunger and want they had suffered had
changed their nature so much that the one did not care what became of
the other if he could save himself. He travelled on most of the day,
so that it was quite late when he reached the castle, and to his great
disappointment found nothing but closed doors and no smoke rising from
the chimneys. He thought there was nothing for it but to die after
all, and had lain down beside the wall, when he heard a window being
opened high above him. At this he looked up, and saw the most
beautiful woman he had ever set eyes on.

'Oh, it is Fortune that has sent you to me,' he said.

'It is indeed,' said she. 'What are you in need of, or what has sent
you here?'

'Necessity,' said he. 'I am dying for want of food and drink.'

'Come inside, then,' she said; 'there is plenty of both here.'

Accordingly he went in to where she was, and she opened a large room
for him, where he saw a number of men lying asleep. She then set food
before him, and after that showed him to the room where the others
were. He lay down on one of the beds and fell sound asleep. And now we
must go back to the two that he left behind him in the wood.

When nightfall and the time of the wild beasts came upon these, the
Englishman happened to climb up into the very same tree on which the
Scotsman was when he got a sight of the castle; and as soon as the day
began to dawn and the Englishman looked to the four quarters of
heaven, what did he see but the castle too! Off he went without saying
a word to the Irishman, and everything happened to him just as it had
done to the Scotsman.

The poor Irishman was now left all alone, and did not know where the
others had gone to, so he just stayed where he was, very sad and
miserable. When night came he climbed up into the same tree as the
Englishman had been on the nigh