ooth of the
matter."

"Even so I deemed," said Ralph: "and to-morrow we shall cross the big
river, thou and I. Is there a ferry or a ford there whereas we shall
come, or how shall we win over it?"

She was growing merrier again now, and laughed at this and said: "O
fair boy! the crossing will be to-morrow and not to-day; let to-morrow
cross its own rivers; for surely to-day is fair enough, and fairer
shall it be when thou hast been fed and art sitting by me in rest and
peace till to-morrow morning. So now hasten yet a little more; and we
will keep the said little stream in sight as well as we may for the
bushes."

So they sped on, till Ralph said: "Will thy feet never tire, beloved?"
"O child," she said, "thou hast heard my story, and mayst well deem
that they have wrought many a harder day's work than this day's. And
moreover they shall soon rest; for look! yonder is our house for this
even, and till to-morrow's sun is high: the house for me and thee and
none else with us." And therewith she pointed to a place where the
stream ran in a chain of pools and stickles, and a sheer cliff rose up
some fifty paces beyond it, but betwixt the stream and the cliff was a
smooth table of greensward, with three fair thorn bushes thereon, and
it went down at each end to the level of the river's lip by a green
slope, but amidmost, the little green plain was some ten feet above the
stream, and was broken by a little undercliff, which went down sheer
into the water. And Ralph saw in the face of the high cliff the mouth
of a cave, however deep it might be.

"Come," said the Lady, "tarry not, for I know that hunger hath hold of
thee, and look, how low the sun is growing!" Then she caught him by the
hand, and fell to running with him to the edge of the stream, where at
the end of the further slope it ran wide and shallow before it entered
into a deep pool overhung with boughs of alder and thorn. She stepped
daintily over a row of big stones laid in the rippling shallow; and
staying herself in mid-stream on the biggest of them, and gathering up
her gown, looked up stream with a happy face, and then looked over her
shoulder to Ralph and said: "The year has been good to me these
seasons, so that when I stayed here on my way to the Castle of
Abundance, I found but few stones washed away, and crossed wellnigh
dry-shod, but this stone my feet are standing on now, I brought down
from under the cliff, and set it amid-most, and I said th