beam of light, and she was gone, and that for ever! East sought they her, and west, in northern paths and south; but she was never more seen in the lands. Her mother wept till she had not a tear left; none sought to comfort her, for it was vain. Moons waxed and waned, and the crones by the cottage hearth had whiled away many a shadowy night with tales of Alice of the Combe. But at the last, as the gardener in the pleasaunce[34] leaned one day on his spade, he saw among the roses a small round hillock of earth, such as he had never seen before, and upon it something which shone. It was her ring! It was the very jewel she had worn the day she vanished out of sight! They looked earnestly upon it, and they saw within the border, for it was wide, the tracery of certain small fine runes in the ancient Cornish tongue, which said-- “Beryan erde Oyn und perde!” Then came the priest of the place of Morwenna, a grey and silent man! He had served long years at his lonely altar, a worn and solitary form. But he had been wise in language in his youth, and men said that he heard and understood voices in the air when spirits speak and glide. He read and he interpreted thus the legend on the ring,-- “The earth must hide, Both eyes and Pride!” Now as on a day he uttered these words, in the pleasaunce, by the mound, on a sudden there was among the grass a low faint cry. They beheld, and oh, wondrous and strange! There was a small dark creature, clothed in a soft velvet skin in texture and in hue like the Lady Alice her robe, and they saw, as it groped into the earth, that it moved along without eyes, in everlasting night! Then the ancient man wept, for he called to mind many things and saw what they meant; and he showed them how that this was the maiden, who had been visited with a doom for her Pride! Therefore her rich array had been changed into the skin of a creeping thing; and her large proud eyes were sealed up, and she herself had become THE FIRST MOLE OF THE HILLOCKS OF CORNWALL! Ah, woe is me and well-a-day! that damsel so stately and fair, sweet Lady Alice of the Combe, should become, for a judgment, the dark mother of the Moles! Now take ye good heed, Cornish maidens, how ye put on vain apparel to win love! And cast down your eyes, all ye damsels of the west, and look meekly on the ground! Be ye ever good and gentle, tender and true; and when ye see your own image in the glass, and ye begin to be lifted up with the loveliness of that shadowy thing, call to mind the maiden of the vale of Morwenna, her noble eyes and comely countenance, her vesture of price, and the glittering ring! Set ye by the wheel as of old they sate, and when ye draw forth the lengthening wool, sing ye evermore and say-- “Beryan erde Oyn und perde!” FOOTNOTES: [32] From _Notes & Queries_, 1st ser., vol. ii. p. 225. 1850. See Appen. B. [33] Compare “The Silent Tower of Bottreaux.”