Page:The Children Who Followed the Piper.djvu/101

 Valentine, the sword in his hand, went away from her. As he went he heard her wailing like the bird that rises and dives down into the lake.

He went on. He met with no one who could show him the way out of the Dark Forest. He was more weary now and more dispirited. And then he heard a voice. He went toward it, and then he knew it was the Nixie's voice.

She was singing and wailing, and wailing and singing. She was standing in her pool, white like a silver birch, and with her webbed hair red like the winter sun between the pine trees.

"Nixie," said Valentine. She smiled at him again as if she would never weep nor wail any more, and she stretched out her arms to him.

He would listen to her speech and let his weariness go from him. He hung his sword on the branch of a tree that was near the pool. Under the tree was a well of water. He took the cup that was at his belt—the cup that old Philemon had given him, and he dipped it into the