The Field of Clover | Page 6

tore back into the well with a crash like thunder.
Up from the well rose a chant of voices:
'Under Heaven, over Hell, You have broken the spell, You are lord of
the Well.'
Noodle stepped over the brink of his new realm, calling the Well-folk
to reach hands for him and bear him down. All round, the blue arms
started out, catching him and handing him on from one to another
ladderwise, down, and down, and down. As he went, anemone lips
came out of the crannies in the wall, and kissed his feet and hands in
token of allegiance. 'You are lord of the well!' they said, as they passed
him each one to the next.
He came to the bottom of the well; under his feet, wherever he stepped
upon its waters, hands came up and sustained him. The knowledge of
everything that was there had become his. 'Give me,' he said, 'the
crystal cup that is for him who holds kingship over you; so shall I be
lord of you in all places wherever I go.'
A blue arm reached down and drew up from the water a small crystal,
that burned through the darkness with a blue fire, and gave it to Noodle.
'Now I am your king, however far from you!' said Noodle. And they
answered, chanting:
'Under Heaven, over Hell, You have broken the spell, You are lord of
the Well.'

'Lift me up!' said he; and the blue arms caught him and lifted him up;
from one to another they passed him in ascending circles, till he came
to the mouth of the well.
There overhead was the old witch, crouching and looking in to know
what had become of him; and her hair hung far down over her eyes into
the well. He caught her to him by it over the brink. 'Old witch,' he said,
'you must change places with me now!' and he tossed her down to the
bottom of the well.
She went like a falling shuttlecock, shrieking as she fell; and as she
struck the water, the drowned bodies of the men she had sent there
came to the surface, and caught her by the feet and hair, and drew her
down, making an end of her, as she also had made of them.

[Illustration]
IV
THE PRINCESS MELILOT
When Noodle, carrying the crystal with him, set foot once more upon
dry land, straightway he was again upon the back of the Galloping
Plough, with the world flying away under him. But now weariness
came over him, and his head weighed this way and that, so that earth
and sky mixed themselves before his gaze, and he was so drugged with
sleep that he had no wits to bid the Plough slacken from its speed.
Therefore it happened that as they passed a wood, a hanging bough
caught him, and brushed him like a feather from his place, landing him
on a green bosom of grass, where he slept the sleep of the weary, nor
ever lifted his head to see the Plough fast disappearing over hill and
valley and plain, out of sound of his voice or sight of his eye.
When Noodle awoke and found that the Plough was gone, he was bitter
against himself for his folly. 'So poor a use to make of so noble a
steed!' he cried; 'no wonder it has gone from me to seek for a worthier
master! If by good fortune I find it again, needs must I do great things

by its aid to be worthy of its service.' So he set out, following the
furrow of its course, determined, however far he must seek, to journey
on till he found it.
For a whole year he travelled, till at length he came, footsore and weary,
to a deserted palace standing in the midst of an overgrown garden. The
great gates, which lay wide open, were overrun with creepers, and the
paths were green with weeds. That morning he had thought that he saw
far away on the hills the gleam of his silver Plough, and now hope rose
high, for he could see by its track that the Plough had passed before
him into the garden of the palace. 'O my moonbeam,' he thought, 'is it
here I shall find you at last?'
Within the garden there was a sound of cross questions and crooked
answers, of many talking with loud voices, and of one weeping apart
from the rest. When he got quite close, he was struck still with awe,
and joy, and wonder. For first there lay the Galloping Plough in the
middle of a green lawn, and round it a score of serving-men, tugging at
it and trying to make it move on. Near