but the month
before thou wert last at Swevenham, that Wat Miller and Simon Bowyer
set off to seek the Well at the World's End, and took with them Alice
of Queenhough, whom Simon loved as well as might be, and Wat somewhat
more than well. Mindest thou not? There are more than I alive that
remember it.'

"'Yea,' said I, 'I remember it well.'

"For indeed, foster-son, these were the very three of whom I told thee,
though I told thee not their names.

"'Well,' said I; 'how sped they? Came they back, or any of them?'
'Nay,' she said, 'that were scarce to be looked for.' Said I: 'Have
any other to thy knowledge gone on this said quest?'

"'Yea,' she said, 'I will tell thee all about it, and then there will
be an end of the story, for none knoweth better thereof than I. First
there was that old man, the wizard, to whom folk from Swevenham and
other places about were used to seek for his lore in hidden matters;
and some months after those three had departed, folk who went to his
abode amongst the mountains found him not; and soon the word was about
that he also, for as feeble as he was, had gone to seek the Well at the
World's End; though may-happen it was not so. Then the next spring
after thy departure, Richard, comes home Arnold Wright from the wars,
and asks after Alice; and when he heard what had befallen, he takes a
scrip with a little meat for the road, lays his spear on his shoulder,
and is gone seeking the lost, and the thing which they found not--that,
I deem, was the end of him. Again the year after that, as I deem,
three of our carles fell in with two knights riding east from Whitwall,
and were questioned of them concerning the road to the said Well, and
doubted not but that they were on that quest. Furthermore (and some of
you wot this well enough, and more belike know it not) two of our young
men were faring by night and cloud on some errand, good or bad, it
matters not, on the highway thirty miles east of Whitwall: it was after
harvest, and the stubble-fields lay on either side of the way, and the
moon was behind thin clouds, so that it was light on the way, as they
told me; and they saw a woman wending before them afoot, and as they
came up with her, the moon ran out, and they saw that the woman was
fair, and that about her neck was a chaplet of gems that shone in the
moon, and they had a longing both for the jewel and the woman: but
before they laid hand on her they asked her of whence and whither