isle without the house, and that mayhappen we shall find them there;
and yet I trow not before we have made guile meet guile, and overcome
the sorceress. But come now, let us be doing, and begin to quarter
this little land as the kestrel doth the water-meadow; and leave we
our armour, lest we weary us, for we shall have no need for hard
strokes.

We hung up there on the tree helm and shield and hauberk, and all our
defences, and went our ways quartering the isle; and the work was
toilsome, but we rested not till the time was come to keep tryst with
the lady; and all that while we found no sign of the darling ones:
and the isle was everywhere a meadow as fair as a garden, with little
copses of sweet-growing trees here and there, and goodly brooks of
water, but no tillage anywhere: wild things, as hart and buck and
roe, we came upon, and smaller deer withal, but all unhurtful to man;
but of herding was no token.

Came we then back to that lordly perron, and there, at the foot
thereof, stood the witch-wife, and received us joyously; clad was she
all gloriously in red scarlet broidered and begemmed; her arms bare
and her feet sandalled, and her yellow hair hanging down from under
its garland; and certainly it was so that she had grown fairer, and
was sleek and white and well-shapen, and well-haired; yet by all
that, the visage of her was little bettered, and unto me she was
loathsome.

Now the feast went much as the earlier meal had done; and Baudoin was
surly and Arthur blithe and buxom; and nought befell to tell of, save
that dishes and meats, and flasks and cups, and all things came upon
the board as if they were borne thereon by folk unseen; and thereat