Starting, I glanced up, to find her busied with the comb again and immediately recognised that here was neither goddess nor dryad but merely a well-shaped, comely young woman with extraordinarily long hair; which fact established, my hunger (momentarily forgotten) returned with keener pang than ever. "Are ye going to sleep again?" she enquired, finding me silent. "No!" "Well, don't you smell it?" "Pray what is it?" "A duck as I be roasting to our supper." "Duck!" I repeated, mouth watering. "I have breathed its enticement ever since I awoke." "Wi' plenty o' sage and onion, a new loaf, and cheese!" she added, with a nod of her shapely head at each item, "unless," said she, eyeing me askance, "you're minded to starve--as you said?" At this I grew very despondent and, sighing, watched her twist her glossy hair into two long braids and tie up the ends with small ribbands which I thought a very quaint and pretty fashion. She now bade me help her to set up the supper table, which proved to be a weather-beaten half-door propped upon baskets. This done, she took the candle and descended below, I following; and here, within an old cauldron pierced with many holes, burned a fire, above which was a covered pot whence emanated that fragrance I have already mentioned, but stronger and more savoury than ever now, so that my hunger was wrought to a passionate yearning, more especially when, having removed the pot from the fire, she lifted the cover. Ascending to the loft she pronounced supper all ready and bade me sit down and eat. But this I could not do for my pride's sake as I freely confessed, which seemed to surprise her not a little. "Well then," said she, perceiving me thus determined, "you may eat if you are truly hungry, because none o' the money I prigs pays for this duck." So down I sat forthwith and never in all my life enjoyed any meal quite so much, as I told her. "Well, then, eat it!" said she in her ungracious, half-sullen manner. "I mean to," I retorted, "though I must say you are a wonderful cook." At this she merely scowled at me and I did not venture another remark until the sharper pangs of hunger were appeased, then, sighing, I spoke again. "Yes, I repeat you are a wonderful cook! But then everything seems so wonderful to me--this place, for instance--so strange and so solitary!" "It is!" she answered, leaning her chin on her hands and staring at me across the table. "That's why I runs away here to hide from the _chals_ or when in any trouble wi' old Azor--yes, 'tis a very lonely place, which do make me wonder if you be afeard o' ghosts?" "No--that is, I don't think so--if such things do really exist. But why do you ask?" "A woman was murdered here once an' they say her spirit walks, so there's few people dare venter here by day an' never a one by night, an' that's why 'tis so lonely an' that's why I loves the place." "Then you don't believe in ghosts?"