us and
seldom did I ever see man or woman there, and held no converse with
any, save as I shall tell thee presently: though now and again a man or
a woman passed by; what they were I knew not, nor their whence and
whither, but by seeing them I came to know that there were other folk
in the world besides us two. Nought else I knew save how to spin, and
to tend our goats and milk them, and to set snares for birds and small
deer: though when I had caught them, it irked me sore to kill them, and
I had let them go again had I not feared the carline. Every day early
I was put forth from the house and garth, and forbidden to go back
thither till dusk. While the days were long and the grass was growing,
I had to lead our goats to pasture in the wood-lawns, and must take
with me rock and spindle, and spin so much of flax or hair as the woman
gave me, or be beaten. But when the winter came and the snow was on
the ground, then that watching and snaring of wild things was my
business.

"At last one day of late summer when I, now of some fifteen summers,
was pasturing the goats not far from the house, the sky darkened, and
there came up so great a storm of thunder and lightning, and huge drift
of rain, that I was afraid, and being so near to the house, I hastened
thither, driving the goats, and when I had tethered them in the shed of
the croft, I crept trembling up to the house, and when I was at the
door, heard the clack of the loom in the weaving-chamber, and deemed
that the woman was weaving there, but when I looked, behold there was
no one on the bench, though the shuttle was flying from side to side,
and the shed opening and changing, and the sley coming home in due
order. Therewithal I heard a sound as of one singing a song in a low
voice, but the words I could not understand: then terror seized on my
heart, but I stepped over the threshold, and as the door of the chamber
was open, I looked aside and saw therein the woman sitting stark naked
on the floor with a great open book before her, and it was from her
mouth that the song was coming: grim she looked, and awful, for she was
a big woman, black-haired and stern of aspect in her daily wont,
speaking to me as few words as might be, and those harsh enough, yea
harsher than when I was but little. I stood for one moment afraid
beyond measure, though the woman did not look at me, and I hoped she
had not seen me; then I ran back into the storm, though it was now
wilder tha