I had never shown any wish to return to my own home since I had
been taken away as a little boy, and no one had ever pressed me to
do so. The place had been kept in order after a fashion, and did
not seem to have suffered during the fifteen years or more of my
absence. Nothing earthly could affect those old gray walls that
had fought the elements for so many centuries. The garden was more
wild than I remembered it; the marble causeways about the pools
looked more yellow and damp than of old, and the whole place at
first looked smaller. It was not until I had wandered about the
house and grounds for many hours that I realized the huge size of
the home where I was to live in solitude. Then I began to delight
in it, and my resolution to live alone grew stronger.

The people had turned out to welcome me, of course, and I tried to
recognize the changed faces of the old gardener and the old
housekeeper, and to call them by name. My old nurse I knew at
once. She had grown very gray since she heard the coffins fall in
the nursery fifteen years before, but her strange eyes were the
same, and the look in them woke all my old memories. She went over
the house with me.

"And how is the Woman of the Water?" I asked, trying to laugh a
little. "Does she still play in the moonlight?"

"She is hungry," answered the Welshwoman, in a low voice.

"Hungry? Then we will feed her." I laughed. But old Judith
turned very pale, and looked at me strangely.

"Feed her? Aye--you will feed her well," she muttered, glancing