So sweetly they wore through the last minutes of the day,
and when it was as dark as it would be in that fair season,
they lay down by the green knoll at the ending of the land,
and were lulled to sleep by the bubbling of the Well at
the World's End.
BOOK FOUR
The Road Home
CHAPTER 1
Ralph and Ursula Come Back Again Through the Great Mountains
On the morrow morning they armed them and took to their horses and departed
from that pleasant place and climbed the mountain without weariness,
and made provision of meat and drink for the Dry Desert, and so entered it,
and journeyed happily with naught evil befalling them till they came
back to the House of the Sorceress; and of the Desert they made little,
and the wood was pleasant to them after the drought of the Desert.
But at the said House they saw those kind people, and they saw
in their eager eyes as in a glass how they had been bettered
by their drinking of the Well, and the Elder said to them:
"Dear friends, there is no need to ask you whether ye
have achieved your quest; for ye, who before were lovely,
are now become as the very Gods who rule the world.
And now methinks we have to pray you but one thing, to wit
that ye will not be overmuch of Gods, but will be kind and lowly
with them that needs must worship you."
They laughed on him for kindness' sake, and kissed and embraced
the old man, and they thanked them all for their helping,
and they abode with them for a whole day in good-will and love,
and thereafter the carle, who was the son of the Elder, with his wife,
bade farewell to his kinsmen, and led Ralph and Ursula back through
the wood and over the desert to the town of the Innocent Folk.
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