"'Yea,' said I, 'I remember it well.'

"For indeed, foster-son, these were the very three of whom I told thee,
though I told thee not their names.

"'Well,' said I; 'how sped they? Came they back, or any of them?'
'Nay,' she said, 'that were scarce to be looked for.' Said I:
'Have any other to thy knowledge gone on this said quest?'

"'Yea,' she said, 'I will tell thee all about it, and then there will be
an end of the story, for none knoweth better thereof than I. First there
was that old man, the wizard, to whom folk from Swevenham and other places
about were used to seek for his lore in hidden matters; and some months
after those three had departed, folk who went to his abode amongst
the mountains found him not; and soon the word was about that he also,
for as feeble as he was, had gone to seek the Well at the World's End;
though may-happen it was not so. Then the next spring after thy departure,
Richard, comes home Arnold Wright from the wars, and asks after Alice;
and when he heard what had befallen, he takes a scrip with a little meat
for the road, lays his spear on his shoulder, and is gone seeking the lost,
and the thing which they found not--that, I deem, was the end of him.
Again the year after that, as I deem, three of our carles fell in with two
knights riding east from Whitwall, and were questioned of them concerning
the road to the said Well, and doubted not but that they were on that quest.
Furthermore (and some of you wot this well enough, and more belike know
it not) two of our young men were faring by night and cloud on some errand,
good or bad, it matters not, on the highway thirty miles east of Whitwall:
it was after harvest, and the stubble-fields lay on either side of the way,
and the moon was behind thin clouds, so that it was light on the way,
as they told me; and they saw a woman wending before them afoot, and as they