reading in a book when Richard came in, but he stood up
and greeted him; and Richard said smiling: "What have ye found in the
book, lord?" Said Ralph: "It telleth of the deeds of Alexander." "Is
there aught concerning the Well at the World's End therein?" said
Richard. "I have not found aught thereof as yet," said Ralph; "but the
book tells concerning the Dry Tree, and of kings sitting in their
chairs in the mountains nearby."

"Well then," said Richard, "maybe thou wilt think me the better
tale-teller." "Tell on then," quoth Richard. So they went and sat them
down in a window, and Richard said:

"When I came to Swevenham with two old men that I had known young, the
folk made much of me, and made me good cheer, whereof were over long to
tell thee; but to speak shortly, I drew the talk round to the matter
that we would wot of: for we spake of the Men of the Dry Tree, and an
old man began to say, as master Clement the other day, that this name
of theirs was but a token and an armoury which those champions have
taken from the Tree itself, which Alexander the Champion saw in his
wayfarings; and he said that this tree was on the hither side of the
mountains called the Wall of the World, and no great way from the last
of the towns whereto Clement will wend; for Clement told me the name
thereof, to wit, Goldburg. Then another and an older man, one that I
remember a stout carle ere I left Swevenham, said that this was not so,
but that the Tree was on the further side of the Wall of the World, and
that he who could lay his hand on the bole thereof was like enough to
drink of the Well at the World's End. Thereafter another spake, and
told a tale of how the champions at Hampton first took the Dry Tree for
a token; and he said that the rumour ran, that a woman had brought the
tidings thereof to those valiant men, and had fixed the name upon them,
though wherefore none knew. So the talk went on.

"But there was a carline sitting in the ingle, and she knew me and I
her. And indeed in days past, when I was restless and longing to
depart, she might have held me at Swevenham, for she was one of the
friends that I loved there: a word and a kiss had done it, or maybe the
kiss without the word: but if I had the word, I had not the kiss of
her. Well, when the talk began to fall, she spake and said to me:

"'Now it is somewhat strange that the talk must needs fall on this
seeking of that which shall not be found, whereas it was