Then she hesitated, and freeing herself at last slipped from my side, yet
before she was quite gone half turned again and whispered so low that no
one but I could hear it, "A golden pool, and a silver fish, and a line
no thicker than a hair!" and before I could beg a meaning of her, had
passed down the hall and taken a place with the other expectant damsels.

"A golden pool," I said to myself, "a silver fish, and a line of hair."
What could she mean? Yet that she meant something, and something clearly
of importance, I could not doubt. "A golden pool, and a silver fish--"
I buried my chin in my chest and thought deeply but without effect while
the preparations were made and the fateful urn, each maid having slipped
her name tablet within, was brought down to us, covered in a beautiful
web of rose-coloured tissue, and commenced its round, passing slowly from
hand to hand as each of those handsome, impassive, fawn-eyed gallants
lifted a corner of the web in turn and helped themselves to fate.

"A golden pool," I muttered, "and a silver fish"--so absorbed in my own
thoughts I hardly noticed the great cup begin its journey, but when it had
gone three or four places the glitter of the lights upon it caught my eye.
It was of pure gold, round-brimmed, and circled about with a string of
the blue convolvulus, which implies delight to these people. Ay! and
each man was plunging his hand into the dark and taking in his turn a
small notch-edged mother-of-pearl billet from it that flashed soft and
silvery as he turned it in his hand to read the name engraved in unknown
characters thereon. "Why," I said, with a start, "surely THIS might
be the golden pool and these the silver fish--but the hair-fine line?
And again I meditated deeply, with all my senses on the watch.

Slowly the urn crept round, and as each man took a ticket from it, and
passed it, smiling, to the seneschal behind him, that official read out