To the Wailing Tower we came, and up the stairs, and found the door open of the prison-chamber, and all there as thou hast told us, Birdalone; only we opened the great coffer, whence thou didst refrain thee, and found it full of hideous gear truly, as fetters and chains, and whips and rods, and evil tools of the tormentors, and cursed it all and came away; and Arthur said: Lo you, this stupid one! How eager is she to bid us what to do, and to tell us that our ladies are not in this evil house, since she leaveth all open to us. Yet we went about the house without, and counted the windows heedfully to see that we had missed no chamber, and found nought amiss; and then we went in again and sought as low down as we might, to see if perchance some dungeon there were underground, but found nought save a very goodly undercroft below the great hall, which was little less fair than that which was above it. So came the evening and the banquet, and the end of that day; but the witch-wife led Arthur by the hand to the board, and afterwards to the chamber ere we slept. On the fourth day and the fifth it was no otherwise than erst; and when I fared to bed I felt confused in my head and sick of heart. The night of the next day (the sixth), as we went to our chambers, and the witch-wife and Arthur hand-in-hand, she stayed him a while, and spake eagerly to him in a soft voice; and as he came up to me afterwards he said: To-night I have escaped it, but there will not be escape for long. From what? said I. He said: From bedding her; for now it has come to this, that presently we must slay her at once and have no knowledge of our sweetlings, or I must do her will. In such wise passed four more days, and it was the twelfth morning of our sojourn there, and we went forth on our search of every mead and every covert of the isle, and all day we found nought to our purpose; but as it grew toward sunset, and there grew great clouds in the eastern ort, piled up and copper-coloured, we came over a bent on to a little green dale watered by a clear brook, and as we looked down into it we saw something shine amongst its trees; so we hastened toward that gleam, and lo, amidst the dale, with the brook running through it, a strange garth we saw. For there was a pavilion done of timber and board, and gaily painted and gilded, and out from that house was, as it were, a great cage of thin gilded bars, both walls and roof, just so wide apart as no one full-grown, carl or quean, could thrust through.