, and
she said: From ruin and wrack to the Well at the World's End, and
therewith turned on them with a naked sword in her hand; so that they
shrank from before her.

"'Hearken once more: the next year came a knight to Swevenham, and
guested in this same house, and he sat just where sitteth now yon
yellow-headed swain, and the talk went on the same road as it hath gone
to-night; and I told him all the tale as I have said it e'en now; and
he asked many questions, but most of the Lady with the pair of beads.
And on the morrow he departed and we saw him not again.

"Then she was silent, but the young man at whom she had pointed blushed
red and stared at her wide-eyed, but said no word. But I spake: 'Well
dame, but have none else gone from Swevenham, or what hath befallen
them?'

"She said: 'Hearken yet! Twenty years agone a great sickness lay
heavy upon us and the folk of Whitwall, and when it was at its worst,
five of our young men, calling to mind all the tales concerning the
Well at the World's End, went their ways to seek it, and swore that
back would they never, save they found it and could bear its water to
the folk of Swevenham; and I suppose they kept their oath; for we saw
naught either of the water or of them. Well, I deem that this is the
last that I have to tell thee, Richard, concerning this matter: and now
is come the time for thee to tell tales of thyself.'

"Thus for that time dropped the talk of the Well at the World's End,
Lord Ralph, and of the way thither. But I hung about the township yet
a while, and yesterday as I stood on their stone bridge, and looked on
the water, up comes that long lad with the yellow hair that the dame
had pointed at, and says to me: 'Master Richard, saving thine age and
thy dignity and mastery, I can join an end to the tale which the
carline began on Sunday night.' 'Yea, forsooth?' said I, 'and how, my
lad?' Said he: 'Thou hast a goodly knife there in thy girdle, give it
to me, and I will tell thee.' 'Yea,' quoth I, 'if thy tale be
knife-worthy.'

"Well, the end of it was that he told me thus: That by night and moon
he came on one riding the highway, just about where the other woman had
been seen, whose tale he had heard of. He deemed at first this rider
to be a man, or a lad rather for smallness and slenderness, but coming
close up he found it was a woman, and saw on her neck a chaplet of
gems, and deemed it no great feat to take it of her: but he asked her
o