She was growing merrier again now, and laughed at this and said:
"O fair boy! the crossing will be to-morrow and not to-day;
let to-morrow cross its own rivers; for surely to-day is
fair enough, and fairer shall it be when thou hast been fed
and art sitting by me in rest and peace till to-morrow morning.
So now hasten yet a little more; and we will keep the said
little stream in sight as well as we may for the bushes."

So they sped on, till Ralph said: "Will thy feet never tire, beloved?"
"O child," she said, "thou hast heard my story, and mayst well
deem that they have wrought many a harder day's work than this
day's. And moreover they shall soon rest; for look! yonder
is our house for this even, and till to-morrow's sun is high:
the house for me and thee and none else with us." And therewith
she pointed to a place where the stream ran in a chain of pools
and stickles, and a sheer cliff rose up some fifty paces beyond it,
but betwixt the stream and the cliff was a smooth table of greensward,
with three fair thorn bushes thereon, and it went down at each end
to the level of the river's lip by a green slope, but amidmost,
the little green plain was some ten feet above the stream, and was
broken by a little undercliff, which went down sheer into the water.
And Ralph saw in the face of the high cliff the mouth of a cave,
however deep it might be.

"Come," said the Lady, "tarry not, for I know that hunger
hath hold of thee, and look, how low the sun is growing!"
Then she caught him by the hand, and fell to running with him
to the edge of the stream, where at the end of the further
slope it ran wide and shallow before it entered into a deep