ndered, and still he spoke to no one, not even to the Queen.

At last she spoke to him. "Dress thee, and get thee gone, Thomas," she
said, "for thou mayest not linger here any longer. Myself will convey
thee on thy journey, and take thee back safe and sound to thine own
country again."

Thomas looked at her in amazement. "I have only been here three days,"
he said, "and methought thou spakest of seven years."

The lady smiled.

"Time passes quickly in this country, Thomas," she replied. "It may not
appear so long to thee, but it is seven long years and more, since thou
camest into Fairyland. I would fain have kept thee longer; but it may
not be, and I will show to thee the reason. Every seven years an evil
spirit comes, and chooses someone out of our court, and carries him away
to unknown regions, and, as thou art a stranger, and a goodly fellow
withal, I fear me his choice would fall on thee; and although I brought
thee here, and have kept thee here for seven years, 'twill never be said
that I betrayed thee to an evil spirit. Therefore this very night we
must be gone."

So once more the gray palfrey was brought, and Thomas and the lady
mounted it, and they went back by the road by which they had come, and
once more they came to the Eildon Tree.

The sun was shining when they arrived, and the birds singing, and the
Huntly Burn tinkling just as it had always done, and it seemed to Thomas
more impossible than ever that he had been away from it all for more
than seven years.

He felt strangely sorry to say farewell to the beautiful lady, and he
asked her to give him some token that would prove to people that he had
really been in Fairyland.

"Thou hast already the Gift of Truth," she replied, "and I will add to
that the Gift of Prophecy, and of writing wondrous verses; and here is a
harp that was fashioned in Fairyland. With its music, set to thine own
words, no minstrel on earth shall be to thee a rival. So shall all the
world know for certain that thou learnedst the art from no earthly
teacher; and some day, perchance, I will return."

Then the lady vanished, and Thomas was left all alone.

After this, he lived at his Castle of Ercildoune for many a long year,
and well he deserved the names of Thomas the Rhymer, and True Thomas,
which the country people gave him; for the verses which he wrote were
the sweetest that they had ever heard, while all the things which he
prophesied came most surely to pass.

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