e left, nor heard speech of any one, but
thought upon the thought of the morrow. And her nurse fed her in
silence, and she took of the food with her left hand, and ate it without
grace.

Now when the nine years were out, it fell dusk in the autumn, and there
came a sound in the wind like a sound of piping. At that the nurse
lifted up her finger in the vaulted house.

"I hear a sound in the wind," said she, "that is like the sound of
piping."

"It is but a little sound," said the King's daughter, "but yet is it
sound enough for me."

So they went down in the dusk to the doors of the house, and along the
beach of the sea. And the waves beat upon the one hand, and upon the
other the dead leaves ran; and the clouds raced in the sky, and the gulls
flew widdershins. And when they came to that part of the beach where
strange things had been done in the ancient ages, lo, there was the
crone, and she was dancing widdershins.

"What makes you dance widdershins, old crone?" said the King's daughter;
"here upon the bleak beach, between the waves and the dead leaves?"

"I hear a sound in the wind that is like a sound of piping," quoth she.
"And it is for that that I dance widdershins. For the gift comes that
will make you bare, and the man comes that must bring you care. But for
me the morrow is come that I have thought upon, and the hour of my
power."

"How comes it, crone," said the King's daughter, "that you waver like a
rag, and pale like a dead leaf before my eyes?"

"Because the morrow has come that I have thought upon, and the hour of my
power," said the crone; and she fell on the beach, and, lo! she was but
stalks of the sea tangle, and dust of the sea sand, and the sand lice
hopped upon the place of her.

"This is the strangest thing that befell between two seas," said the
King's daughter of Duntrine.

But the nurse broke out and moaned like an autumn gale. "I am weary of
the wind," quoth she; and she bewailed her day.

The King's daughter was aware of a man upon the beach; he went hooded so
that none might perceive his face, and a pipe was underneath his arm. The
sound of his pipe was like singing wasps, and like the wind that sings in
windlestraw; and it took hold upon men's ears like the crying of gulls.

"Are you the comer?" quoth the King's daughter of Duntrine.

"I am the corner," said he, "and these are the pipes that a man may hear,
and I have power upon the hour, and this is the song of the