But dost thou not
remember, Gold-mane, how that one day last Hay-month, as ye were
resting in the meadows in the cool of the evening, there came to you
a minstrel that played to you on the fiddle, and therewith sang a
song that melted all your hearts, and that this song told of the
Wild-wood, and what was therein of desire and peril and beguiling and
death, and love unto Death itself? Dost thou remember, friend?'
'Yea,' he said, 'and how when the minstrel was done Stone-face fell
to telling us more tales yet of the woodland, and the minstrel sang
again and yet again, till his tales had entered into my very heart.'
'Yea,' she said, 'and that minstrel was Wood-wont; and I sent him to
sing to thee and thine, deeming that if thou didst hearken, thou
would'st seek the woodland and happen upon us.'
He laughed and said: 'Thou didst not doubt but that if we met, thou
mightest do with me as thou wouldest?'
'So it is,' she said, 'that I doubted it little.'
'Therein wert thou wise,' said Face-of-god; 'but now that we are
talking without guile to each other, mightest thou tell me wherefore
it was that Folk-might made that onslaught upon me? For certain it
is that he was minded to slay me.
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