She spake, and again I
seemed to have heard her voice before: 'Hail, Queen,' she said,
'it does my heart good to see thee thus in thy glorious estate.'
So I took her greeting; but those tales of my being but a sending
of the Devil for the ruin of that land came into my mind, and I
sent away the folk who were thereby before I said more to her.
Then she spake again: 'Even so I guessed it would be that thou
wouldst grow great amongst women.'
"But I said, 'What is this? and 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.
Pages:
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247