ok the necklace and put it in her pouch, and said as to
herself: 'Here, then, is another seeker who hath not found, unless one
should dig a pit for her here when the thaw comes, and call it the Well
at the World's End: belike it will be for her as helpful as the real
one.' Then she turned to me and said: 'Do thou with the rest what thou
wilt,' and therewith she went back hastily to the house. But as for
me, I went back also, and found a pick and a mattock in the goat-house,
and came back in the moonlight and scraped the snow away, and dug a
pit, and buried the poor damsel there with all her gear.

"Wore the winter thence with naught that I need tell of, only I thought
much of the words that my mistress had spoken. Spring came and went,
and summer also, well nigh tidingless. But one day as I drave the
goats from our house there came from the wood four men, a-horseback and
weaponed, but so covered with their armour that I might see little of
their faces. They rode past me to our house, and spake not to me,
though they looked hard at me; but as they went past I heard one say:
'If she might but be our guide to the Well at the World's End!' I durst
not tarry to speak with them, but as I looked over my shoulder I saw
them talking to my mistress in the door; but meseemed she was clad but
in poor homespun cloth instead of her rich apparel, and I am
far-sighted and clear-sighted. After this the autumn and winter that
followed it passed away tidingless."

CHAPTER 4

The Lady Tells of Her Deliverance

"Now I had outgrown my old fear, and not much befell to quicken it: and
ever I was as much out of the house as I could be. But about this time
my mistress, from being kinder to me than before, began to grow harder,
and ofttimes used me cruelly: but of her deeds to me, my friend, thou
shalt ask me no more than I tell thee. On a day of May-tide I fared
abroad with my goats, and went far with them, further from the house
than I had been as yet. The day was the fairest of the year, and I
rejoiced in it, and felt as if some exceeding great good were about to
befall me; and the burden of fears seemed to have fallen from me. So I
went till I came to a little flowery dell, beset with blossoming
whitethorns and with a fair stream running through it; a place somewhat
like to this, save that the stream there was bigger. And the sun was
hot about noontide, so I did off my raiment, which was rough and poor,
and more meet for