cause her come up hither to me." The husbandman, knowing her by her
voice, replied:--"Alas! Madam, who set you there? Your maid has been
seeking you all day long: but who would ever have supposed that you were
there?" Whereupon he took the props of the ladder, and set them in
position, and proceeded to secure the rounds to them with withies. Thus
engaged he was found by the maid, who, as she entered the tower, beat her
face and breast, and unable longer to keep silence, cried out:--"Alas,
sweet my lady, where are you?" Whereto the lady made answer as loud as
she might:--"O my sister, here above am I, weep not, but fetch me my
clothes forthwith." Well-nigh restored to heart, to hear her mistress's
voice, the maid, assisted by the husbandman, ascended the ladder, which
he had now all but set in order, and gaining the roof, and seeing her
lady lie there naked, spent and fordone, and liker to a half-burned stump
than to a human being, she planted her nails in her face and fell a
weeping over her, as if she were a corpse. However, the lady bade her for
God's sake be silent, and help her to dress, and having learned from her
that none knew where she had been, save those that had brought her her
clothes and the husbandman that was there present, was somewhat consoled,
and besought her for God's sake to say nought of the matter to any. Thus
long time they conversed, and then the husbandman took the lady on his
shoulders, for walk she could not, and bore her safely out of the tower.
The unfortunate maid, following after with somewhat less caution,
slipped, and falling from the ladder to the ground, broke her thigh, and
roared for pain like any lion. So the husbandman set the lady down upon a
grassy mead, while he went to see what had befallen the maid, whom,
finding her thigh broken, he brought, and laid beside the lady: who,
seeing her woes completed by this last misfortune, and that she of whom,
most of all, she had expected succour, was lamed of a thigh, was
distressed beyond measure, and wept again so piteously that not only was
the husbandman powerless to comfort her, but was himself fain to weep.