as master Clement the other day, that this name of theirs was but a token
and an armoury which those champions have taken from the Tree itself,
which Alexander the Champion saw in his wayfarings; and he said that this
tree was on the hither side of the mountains called the Wall of the World,
and no great way from the last of the towns whereto Clement will wend;
for Clement told me the name thereof, to wit, Goldburg. Then another
and an older man, one that I remember a stout carle ere I left Swevenham,
said that this was not so, but that the Tree was on the further side
of the Wall of the World, and that he who could lay his hand on the bole
thereof was like enough to drink of the Well at the World's End.
Thereafter another spake, and told a tale of how the champions at Hampton
first took the Dry Tree for a token; and he said that the rumour ran,
that a woman had brought the tidings thereof to those valiant men,
and had fixed the name upon them, though wherefore none knew.
So the talk went on.

"But there was a carline sitting in the ingle, and she knew me and I her.
And indeed in days past, when I was restless and longing to depart, she might
have held me at Swevenham, for she was one of the friends that I loved there:
a word and a kiss had done it, or maybe the kiss without the word:
but if I had the word, I had not the kiss of her. Well, when the talk began
to fall, she spake and said to me:

"'Now it is somewhat strange that the talk must needs fall on this seeking
of that which shall not be found, whereas it was but the month before thou
wert last at Swevenham, that Wat Miller and Simon Bowyer set off to seek
the Well at the World's End, and took with them Alice of Queenhough,
whom Simon loved as well as might be, and Wat somewhat more than well.
Mindest thou not? There are more than I alive that remember it.'