Birdalone looked through the willow-boughs, and saw her turn away;
then she fared to her fishing with a smile, and soon had plenteous
catch from under the willow-boughs. Then, whereas the day was very
calm and fair, and the dame had given her holiday, she wandered about
the eyot, and most in a little wood of berry-trees, as quicken and
whitebeam and dog-wood, and sported with the birds, who feared her
not, but came and sat on her shoulders, and crept about her feet.
She went also and stood a while on the southern shore, and looked on
the wide water dim in the offing under the hot-weather haze, and
longed to be gone beyond it. Then she turned away, and to the other
shore, and gat her fish and strung them on the string, and made them
fast to her middle, and so took the water back again to the yellow
strand, where now was no one awaiting her. But before she did on her
garments, she looked on them, and saw that they lay not as she had
left them, whereby she knew well that the witch-wife had handled
them.

Amidst all this the day was wearing to an end, and again she saw the
smoke of the cooking-fire going up into the air from the chimney of
the house; and she smiled ruefully, thinking that the witch might yet
find an occasion for ransacking her raiment. But she plucked up
heart, and came home with her catch, and the dame met her with a glum
face, and neither praised her nor blamed her, but took the fish
silently. Such ending had that day.



CHAPTER XV. BIRDALONE WEARETH HER SERPENT-RING