nd when have I known thee before-time?'
She smiled and said naught; and my mind went back to those old days,
and I trembled, and the flesh crept upon my bones, lest this should be
the coming back in a new shape of my mistress whom I had slain. But
the woman laughed, and said, as if she knew my thoughts: 'Nay, it is
not so: the dead are dead; fear not: but hast thou forgotten the Dale
of Lore?'

"'Nay,' said I, 'never; and art thou then the carline that learned me
lore? But if the dead come not back, how do the old grow young again?
for 'tis a score of years since we two sat in the Dale, and I longed
for many things.'

"Said the woman: 'The dead may not drink of the Well at the World's
End; yet the living may, even if they be old; and that blessed water
giveth them new might and changeth their blood, and they are as young
folk for a long while again after they have drunken.' 'And hast thou
drunken?' said I.

"'Yea,' she said; 'but I am minded for another draught.' I said: 'And
wherefore hast thou come to me, and what shall I give to thee?' She
said, 'I will take no gift of thee as now, for I need it not, though
hereafter I may ask a gift of thee. But I am to ask this of thee, if
thou wilt be my fellow-farer on the road thither?' 'Yea?' said I, 'and
leave my love and my lord, and my kingship which he hath given me? for
this I will tell thee, that all that here is done, is done by me.'

"'Great is thy Kingship, Lady,' said the woman, and smiled withal.
Then she sat silent a little, and said: 'When six months are worn, it
will be springtide; I will come to thee in the spring days, and know
what thy mind is then. But now I must depart.' Quoth I: 'Glad shall I
be to talk with thee again; for though thou hast learned me much of
wisdom, yet much more I need; yea, as much as the folk here deem I have
already.' 'Thou shalt have no less,' said the woman. Then she kissed
my hands and went her ways, and I sat musing still for a long while:
because for all my gains, and my love that I had been loved withal, and
the greatness that I had gotten, there was as it were a veil of
unhappiness wrapped round about my heart.

"So wore the months, and ere the winter had come befell an evil thing,
for my lord, who had loved me so, and taken me out of the wilderness,
died, and was gathered to the fathers, and there was I left alone; for
there was no fruit of my womb by him alive. My first-born had been
slain by those wretches, a