amongst the cities and the kingdoms, we will settle it whither I shall go.
See thou! I were fain to be of the brotherhood of the Dry Tree;
yet I deem it will scarce be that I shall go and dwell there straightway.'

"Therewith the old man seemed content; and indeed now that the first joy
of our meeting, when his youth sprang up in him once more, was over,
he found it hard to talk freely with me, and was downcast and shy before me,
as if something had come betwixt us, which had made our lives cold
to each other.

"So that day we left the House of the Sorceress, which I shall
not see again, till I come there hand in hand with thee, beloved.
When we came to the peopled parts, Geoffrey and his sons brought me
to the Land of Abundance, and I found it all as he had said to me:
and I took up my dwelling in the castle, and despised not those few folk
of the land, but was kind to them: but though they praised my gifts,
and honoured me as the saints are honoured, and though they loved me,
yet it was with fear, so that I had little part with them.
There I dwelt then; and the book which thou didst read there,
part true and part false, and altogether of malice against me,
I bought of a monk who came our way, and who at first was sore afeared
when he found that he had come to my castle. As to the halling
of the Chamber of Dais, I have told thee before how my lord,
the King's Son, did do make it in memory of the wilderness wherein
he found me, and the life of thralldom from which he brought me.
There I dwelt till nigh upon these days in peace and quiet:
not did I go to the Dry Tree for a long while, though many of them
sought to me there at the Castle of Abundance; and, woe worth the while!
there was oftenest but one end to their guesting, that of all gifts,
they besought me but of one, which, alack! I might not give them: