Page:The Children Who Followed the Piper.djvu/165

WHO FOLLOWED THE PIPER and John Ball stood at the hedge with old Baldwin beside them.

She was very lovely, but odd looking, Valentine thought, with one of her eyes blue like sapphire and the other eye dark like a dark flower. She was very lovely and odd looking and she smiled on the boy.

"What have you come to Circe for, youth?" said she in a voice that Valentine remembered afterward above every song he had heard. "What have you come to Circe for?"

"To ask of you, O great Enchantress, to show us the way out of the Wood of Daylight-Gone and into the world of men. We have been through the Dark Forest, and Silvanus said that if we came to you, you would show us the way out into the world."

"I will show you the way into the world," said Circe, and she smiled at him and held the bright shuttle in her hand. "They will say in your world that it was strange that Circe helped you. Tell them that Circe never enchanted the