is well for you that I met you, for my whole joy is to
find strangers, and to feast them at my castle, and hear tales from them
of foreign lands. Come up with me and eat the best of venison, and drink
the rich red wine, and sleep upon my famous bed, of which all travellers
say that they never saw the like. For whatsoever the stature of my
guest, however tall or short, that bed fits him to a hair, and he
sleeps on it as he never slept before.”

And he laid hold on Theseus’s hands, and would not let him go.

Theseus wished to go forward, but he was ashamed to seem churlish to so
hospitable a man; and he was curious to see that wondrous bed; and
besides, he was hungry and weary. Yet he shrank from the man, he knew
not why; for though his voice was gentle and fawning, it was dry and
husky, and though his eyes were gentle, they were dull and cold like
stones. But he consented, and went with the man up a glen which led from
the road, under the dark shadow of the cliffs.

As they went up, the glen grew narrower, and the cliffs higher and
darker, and beneath them a torrent roared, half seen between bare
limestone crags. Around them was neither tree nor bush, while from the
white peaks of the mountain the snow-blasts swept down the glen, cutting
and chilling, till a horror fell on Theseus as he looked round at that
doleful place. He said at last, “Your castle stands, it seems, in a
dreary region.”

“Yes; but once within it, hospitality makes all things cheerful. But who
are these?” and he looked back, and Theseus also. Far below, along the
road which they had left, came a string of laden beasts, and merchants
walking by them.

“Ah, poor souls!” said the stranger. “Well for them that I looked back
and saw them! And well for me, too, for I shall have the more guests at
my feast. Wait awhile till I go down and call them, and we shall eat and
drink together the livelong night. Happy am I, to whom Heaven sends so
many guests at once!”

He ran back down the hill, waving his hand and shouting to the
merchants