and looking down from the top of it, beheld the open country again.
But this was otherwise from what they had beheld from the mountain's
brow above Cheaping Knowe. For thence the mountains beyond Whiteness,
even those that they had just ridden, were clear to be seen like the wall
of the plain country. But here, looking adown, the land below them
seemed but a great spreading plain with no hills rising from it,
save that far away they could see a certain break in it, and amidst that,
something that was brighter than the face of the land elsewhere.
Clement told Ralph that this was Goldburg and that it was built on
a gathering of hills, not great, but going up steep from the plain.
And the plain, said he, was not so wholly flat and even as it looked
from up there, but swelled at whiles into downs and low hills.
He told him that Goldburg was an exceeding fair town to behold;
that the lord who had built it had brought from over the mountains masons
and wood-wrights and artificers of all kinds, that they might make it as fair
as might be, and that he spared on it neither wealth nor toil nor pains.
For in sooth he deemed that he should find the Well at the World's End,
and drink thereof, and live long and young and fair past all record;
therefore had he builded this city, to be the house and home of
his long-enduring joyance.

Now some said that he had found the Well, and drank thereof;
others naysaid that; but all deemed that they knew how that Goldburg
was not done building ere that lord was slain in a tumult,
and that what was then undone was cobbled up after the uncomely
fashion of the towns thereabout.

Clement said moreover that, this happy lord dead, things had not
gone so well there as had been looked for. Forsooth it had been
that lord's will and meaning that all folks in Goldburg should thrive,