hey searched in divers places where they had not been the night
before, and even a good way back about the road they had ridden
yesterday, but found no tidings. And Ralph said to himself that this
was naught but what he had looked for after that vision of the night.

So he rode with his fellows somewhat shamefaced that they had seen that
sudden madness in him; but was presently of better cheer than he had
been yet. He rode beside Clement; they went downhill speedily, and the
wilderness began to better, and there was grass at whiles, and bushes
here and there. A little after noon they came out of a pass cleft deep
through the rocks by a swift stream which had once been far greater
than then, and climbed up a steep ridge that lay across the road, and
looking down from the top of it, beheld the open country again. But
this was otherwise from what they had beheld from the mountain's brow
above Cheaping Knowe. For thence the mountains beyond Whiteness, even
those that they had just ridden, were clear to be seen like the wall of
the plain country. But here, looking adown, the land below them seemed
but a great spreading plain with no hills rising from it, save that far
away they could see a certain break in it, and amidst that, something
that was brighter than the face of the land elsewhere. Clement told
Ralph that this was Goldburg and that it was built on a gathering of
hills, not great, but going up steep from the plain. And the plain,
said he, was not so wholly flat and even as it looked from up there,
but swelled at whiles into downs and low hills. He told him that
Goldburg was an exceeding fair town to behold; that the lord who had
built it had brought from over the mountains masons and wood-wrights
and artificers of all kinds, that they might make it as fair as might
be, and that he spared on it neither wealth nor toil nor pains. For in
sooth he deemed that he should find the Well at the World's End, and
drink thereof, and live long and young and fair past all record;
therefore had he builded this city, to be the house and home of his
long-enduring joyance.

Now some said that he had found the Well, and drank thereof; others
naysaid that; but all deemed that they knew how that Goldburg was not
done building ere that lord was slain in a tumult, and that what was
then undone was cobbled up after the uncomely fashion of the towns
thereabout.

Clement said moreover that, this happy lord dead, things had not gon